


Hymns of Tragedy

by crimscntears



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Genre: Anti Rhaegar, Arranged Marriage, Betrayal, Cheating, Death, Definitely Jaime but he burns his white cloak lmao, F/M, Forbidden, I don’t like rhaegar, I don’t like the kingsguard, Jaime appreciation through and through, Jaime is the loml, Lonliness, Love, Lust, Magic, Marriage, Maybe Barristan, Mild smut sometimes, Political Intrigue, War, alternative universes, anti Cersei, anti kingsguard, only canon characters I like are Jaime and Tyrion and Elia and the babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimscntears/pseuds/crimscntears
Summary: Elena Varens, Princess of Verona, is a hostage to Aerys Targaryen. Within the confines of the Red Keep she plummets for Jaime Lannister but every fate is damning and soon enough she’s at death’s door along with Elia and the babes she’d come to love as her own heart. Saved from death, she reunites with some she’d thought she’d lost and loses those most loved. Meanwhile Tywin Lannister threatens her homeland, and she has to act. Slowly, she’ll unravel the secrets of it all.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Elena Varens
Kudos: 15





	1. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhaegar Targaryen won the war that bled a realm. Seven years later he fights on the frontlines as the Greyjoys ignite their own rebellion and he dies (the horror)! Lyanna couldn’t be happier, though a certain golden knight helps her passions.

When once the sky had been splattered with bursts of orange and pink which shone in hazes against the setting sun which is now naught but a vivid daydream, the night reawakens against the dying light. Darkness engulfs King’s Landing, reducing the view of Blackwater Bay to a piercing vale of blackness that sparkles. The moon bares its beauty, setting its light amongst the maiden fair and the golden knight whose beauty shines brighter than the thousands of stars which resemble the dying embers of a fire. Constellations shimmer like fragmented jewels against their hollow skin with stardust smeared across their bruised lips as their hands intertwine with exultant glory. Hearts beating with the immortality of youth as naught else stands proof of their beings and souls thrumming with eternal happiness, they have since learnt the merit that comes with sacrifice. 

Feet gliding them towards Maegor’s Holdfast, Elena Varens and Jaime Lannister synchronise their footsteps as their shadows lurk with dark lips and dark eyes, secrets that are crisscrosses of betrayals and indulgences heavy on their bloodstained lips and light on the palm of their fists as they clutch each other as if the other might fall to pieces of glass shards that embed themselves into one another’s flesh marked with false promises of hope and happy endings. Enveloped by silence and shrouded by tension that may well become a black veil hanging upon their skin that refuses to unravel, their bodies pressed closely together for comfort and warmth. 

The promise of forever invades Elena’s thoughts as she stiffens and relaxes once more with the feeling of Jaime’s touch lingering on her exposed flesh. A vow uttered through stargazing lips and rose tinted eyes whose vision has since shattered into pieces at his feet. A vow that had once bestowed prestige and pride upon her golden knight now inciting nothing more than pressure and provocation as his golden persona fades into nothingness. And promises of another kind. A promise sealed through stolen glances and wanton kisses, tethering the two souls through unravelling innocence and decaying freedom. 

The Gods have made it so that love is our great glory and our greatest tragedy. Only now does Elena understand how such a paradox can exist. Those vows will haunt him forevermore, old ghosts thriving on the virtue that has since been lost to treachery and tyranny. And in turn the feeling inspired by his lips will haunt her as she utters vows of her own, ones that should be of homage and love and fidelity and prosperity but will only incite regret and heartache and shame and sorrow. Where his vows had once been of honour and duty, a curse had disguised itself as a blessing and now it sheds as if it’s snakeskin. And yet her heart is now coated with the stardust smeared on his lips, and her soul thrums with a new rhythm. The tragedy will ignite when their lips are forced to bid farewell and their intertwined fingers unravel like a broken tapestry as the White Cloak he dons will turn red, red, red. 

And yet her maiden’s heart has not yet broken. 

Elena dons a backless and sleeveless gown of sky blue embroidered with ravens and stitched with flowers as she embraces the southern sunshine that nips at her flesh and eats at the core of ice surrounding her heart. Even now, while the sun lurks behind the trees, an eternal warmth lingers in King’s Landing unknown to her motherland. No longer does the land appear to be an unfinished painting with a canvas of snow, under a dove grey sky where the colours of her world would don their winter coats, each hue darker and richer than before. Petals blossom under the writhing sun, deep reds and wintery blues draping an incandescence that reminds Elena of the wildflowers whose beauty is buried under foliage that has stood for centuries past. Though the stench of the city is one so rotten that the flowers may well be chosen for fragrance to drown the odour that still drifts airily. 

Beside her, Jaime is cladded in armour that traps the heat of the days past. Underneath, he’s garmented in simple breeches and a white tunic. Should their world ever be shrouded in naught but darkness, the radiance of his emerald opals would stretch from Dorne to the Wall, like starlight bestowed upon the night. While his eyes speak of summertime his smile speaks of spring. It bestows warmth and benevolence and fervour, inspiring the opium poppies to bloom against the plumes of fluorescence painted by the water gods and fire gods alike. Arrogance clings to him like an old friend but the nature of it endears Elena. Despite possessing the follies of man he’s fraught with a goodness that cannot be taught to even the gentlest of souls. The name he bares is weighty, one that dances with demons of the past and bathes in the blood of the innocent yet he’s so tender and noble and righteous and good. 

The cool air of the outside now abandoning them, Elena and Jaime are flooded with the heat of Maegor’s Holdfast, yet they keep their hands intertwined for another kind of warmth. Just as they trace their way towards Elia’s chambers, the Princess pushes open the door of oak. She dons Dornish garments of orange and yellow that hug her figure, the hues fitting against her skin. Her hair cascades down her back in ebony waves. A gold stud is emplaced through her nose piercing, though she no longer wears earrings. On her wrist lies a bracelet of gold with suns and spears circling each other. Her smile is radiant, with no trace of the betrayal that must have a place in her heart. Yet her eyes have a tenderness that had not been there before the setting of the sun, a hollowness, yet it’s masked in all the love she bares for her children. 

Some women are born with a mother’s love. Simultaneously tender and fierce, at the same time. Draping the love of a thousand stars into their babes and hellfire on those who’d dare harm them. No hardship overcomes that love, nothing can. Women like Elia cover up their pain with fleeting smiles and sharp words and never ending embraces. Women like Elia have too much goodness within them to not be touched by a realm of such deceit and treachery. Women like Elia belong with the stars. 

Hands no longer entwined, Jaime bows while Elena curtsies and it may well be the picture of elegance were it not for the unshed tears in Elia’s eyes. Her smile wavers, for only a moment, but they’ve both noticed. Her sadness is tangible, as if Jaime and Elena can physically feel what she’s feeling. The veil of strength she’s shrouded in is thin right now, as if it’s unravelling itself. When her children are asleep, when they’re unable to question her about their father, when they can’t see the break in character. Even before the war she’d had to place that veil due to the scrutiny of nobles who’d wished to take her place. Nobles who’d smile pretty smiles and say her survival is a blessing, yet behind closed doors their disdain would arise as they’d pray for her to perish under the writhing sun so they or their daughters could take her place. But there’ll only ever be one Elia Martell, Sun of Dorne. Resolve as strong as Valyrian steel and heart as tender as the stars. 

And to repay the sacrifice of Elia’s health and heart Rhaegar Targaryen had started a war. He loves his Lady Lyanna, they’d whisper after that damned Tourney. A kingdom couldn’t keep them apart, they’d whisper whimsically with hate for the foreign Princess who’d taken what’s theirs as if we don’t all dream under the same stars. 

“Your grace,” Jaime says as he rises. Elena refrains from such formalities, understanding Elia’s dislike of the propriety that’s as old as time. And as he rises he strides towards the door, Elena beside him till they’re both halted. 

“As your Princess I command you to take the night off.” Her words are hard, as if trying not to break. Her tone is coloured in a hybrid of sorrow and faith. Her smile is gentle, as is the look she directs towards Jaime and Elena alike. A glance that offers stability and safety and security all at once. 

“My duty is to protect you, Princess.” Jaime’s face is rendered of the childlike reverie he’d once indulged himself in, as if his features are battle hardened because guarding the King is a conflict in itself. The vows of knighthood and the vows of the kingsguard directly contradict one another. Protect the innocent, they say, unless ‘tis your king who condemns the innocent. Abide tyranny in the name of loyalty, treachery in the name of duty, injustice in the name of justice. The kingsguard: enslaved by truth, bounded by honour and carved out of silence. He oft drowns in this persona of glass, Elena the anchor keeping him afloat. But his virtue is unstained, the goodness he emits has not yet faded. And so Elena has hope. 

“You are a boy,” she says so painstakingly raw. It should have been Arthur. 

“Rhaegar,” he begins. 

“Has already taken so much from you both. Your innocence, your freedom. Don’t let him take your joy.” Looking to them both in earnest, Elia shrugs off Elena’s worry for Alyssa as she states that the eldest Varens Princess had drifted to sleep while playing with little Rosa in Elia’s own chambers. That there’s naught to worry about because the babes are safe. And then the door is swiftly shut. 

“I’ll escort you to your chambers, Princess,” Jaime bows to Elena, lowering his voice while he grins with mischief. Elena curtsies prettily, offering a sweet grin of her own as they make way to the room she’s forced to call her own. The walls are a deep shade of red, much contrast to the cream of her chambers at home. It’s as if the colour of death is flaunted to her to remind her of the consequences should her father betray prince bastard, seeing as there even lies a rug of crimson that’s as soft as Jaime’s hands.

Home is the fragrant of wildflowers buried beneath a canvas of snow and the scent of blueberry tarts drifting through the passageways of the Keep. The feel of thawing ice atop her flesh and the touch of snowflakes that’d fall into her ebony tresses as if a tiara crafted by the Gods. The taste of strawberries coated in chocolate and the sensation of her mother’s famous raspberry tarts she’d make in the kitchens herself. The look of death as torrents of water sledge down rocks stained with blood of kings and queens past and the stargazing that had left her restless with wonder. 

Still under the same stars, and yet home couldn’t be further away. 

In another life, she’d find a home within Jaime. A forever home. 

Arriving to the door of firm oak, she enters while Jaime stands at the doorway with the chivalry of a thousand knights. “You are allowed to enter,” Elena says teasingly, brow raised as she looks to Jaime in earnest. He does, gracefully as his sword moves with him. As if it’s not an inanimate object, baring a life of its own. Like the star crossed lovers drunk on delusion, it shall live and die beneath the dome that encases them all. Perhaps it’s forged with the matter of the dead, she muses grimly. 

Jaime takes notice of her dismay. “You think of?” In these last few moons he’s since learnt that she thinks too much. Every thought is budding, and it crisscrosses with another. And then they interlink to form an intricate web unable to be deciphered by men with the sharpest of minds. To decipher her musings, one would have to find themselves in the confines of her head. One would have to dig for the knowledge that seeps itself into her and find the root and stem. 

“Your sword bares the blood of a thousand men.” Her eyes narrow, gazing at his sheath curiously. It glimmers, and it fits perfectly by his side. Yet despite the name it holds there’s no greatness that clings to it. He deserves a great sword, of Valyrian steel. Eyes gazing through the window, dark silhouettes of the city clouds her vision. Nothing but blackness. 

“I haven’t killed a thousand men.” He hasn’t killed any man, and Elena is thankful for that. 

“Not inconsequential drops. But the matter. What if it’s of kings and queens past?” 

“You don’t believe we return to the Gods?” Understanding her implication, he raises a brow yet his tone is coloured in curiosity of his own. Elena saunters closer to him, away from the breeze to where warmth will envelop her. 

“It’s not that I don’t, but some part of our souls must be physical. And they must be returned to the physical world. Besides, you don’t believe in the Gods.” Faith is more than a simple prayer, she’s learnt. It’s everything good in this world from the goodness in his heart to the valour in his eyes. Yet to feel that divinity is another matter entirely. The Gods, all of them, take and take till even the dunes of sand are within their palms. And while she had been blessed Jaime may well have been cursed. A father of stone and mother of glass, a sister of tar and brother of heart. 

“I never said I don’t believe.” He begins with mild amusement, eyes lighting up in mirth and if the Gods are good they’d stay like that forevermore. “I don’t pray to them.” The Lannisters think themselves to be gods made flesh, she’s learnt. And perhaps they have rendered themselves of luminescence and stardust, shedding their mud for flesh and turning their hearts of glass into hearts of gold, gold, gold. 

At the very least, Jaime is golden. 

“You don’t take comfort in your precious seven?” She smirks and he smiles. 

“You take comfort in faces on trees?” he mocks in turn, grin widening. 

“They can hear you,” she says knowingly. 

“I’m terrified,” he replies dryly. 

“You must be awfully warm.” Warmth floods itself into her cheeks, skin still resembling the harsh north but all remains of coldness leaves her. Eyes fixated on the metal that holds all of Jaime’s knightly valour, shifting from his arms to his chest, simultaneously. The smirk she’d adorned turns into a firm line, the feel of his emerald opals peering into her making her dizzy with delusion. Craving an intimacy they haven’t yet shared, footsteps edge closer and closer till they’re one breath. 

“And you awfully cold.” His grin is infuriating and endearing all at once. Sin on his lips, salvation in his eyes. Little did she know, Jaime Lannister may well be her demise. 

“I’m unbound.” That, she is not. No vows tether her to a loveless life and yet Elena will never be free of the duty that follows her like an old ghost. Ghosts are the shadows of the dead, crisscrosses of betrayals and the secret to every war fought in darkness. There are no swords where the real fight happens, but words that pray for life, words that prey for power, words that prey for revenge and words that pray for the light that’s been shielded from them for so long. Everyone has them, yet some take away the parts most loved and others eat away at the hollowness before it can devour you body and soul. She fears the ghosts that follow her will bare the faces of the most loved parts of her. And then Elena Varens will be reduced to a casualty of war as her duty will see her become another fallen princess. The least she deserves is one night of solace in the arms of the man who’s seen her at her best and at her worst. And perhaps she’ll find her forever home. 

“You’re a Princess.” His voice twists, achingly, with a tenderness that’s startling. Fingers delicately graze her arms, up and down, weaving into the soft touch of her flesh as their breathing shallows against the dimness of the light. Eyes firmly fixated on all of her but her own, drinking in her presence and her touch while she’s drunk on dismay. 

“You are obliged to rid yourself of your damning armour.” Like a sweet song, her words may well be hypnotic because he gazes into the softness of her eyes and rids himself of his armour and the cloak that binds him to unspeakable monstrosities, the chunks of metal falling to the floor with a clamour that causes Elena’s ears to ache. 

“And here I thought you like knights.” Garmented in a thin, white tunic that falls loose against his chest and sways with the wisps of the summer wind that chills around them. The whiteness accentuates his chiselled jawline, and through fleeting moments Elena sneaks glances at the bareness of his chest. His previous words had been aching, yet they’re now draped in a hybrid of softness and humour that only he could muster, a small smile that alights his eyes into summer personified. Strands of ebony hair cloud Elena’s eyes and so Jaime laces them behind her ears delicately, as if she’s a box of glass he fears to break. As if it’d cave in on him, glass shards forever in his bloodstream. 

Knights are just men. And Jaime is more. “Only you,” she whispers as the intensity of his gaze enraptures her. Jaime’s wholly beautiful there and then. This persona he’s carved has caused an innate conflict as he drowns, drowns, drowns. Of head and heart. Courage and cowardice. Vice and virtue. Yet who has he damned? He had been damned. The truth had dawned on him slowly, lurking behind every shadow but never quite there. And now he’s here. Playing false knight while baring the innocence of boyhood. Thinking himself to be ugly. Elena can’t see the ugliness, only the true beauty that she hopes will never fade. It’s more than skin deep, that beauty. He won’t be a false knight forever, she knows, virtue will prevail and duty will unravel. 

“I’d never seen myself as the lesser man and yet here I am.” He says it fondly, with no trace of resentment, and the warmth of his tone causes Elena to flush, though she maintains dignity under his touch. 

The heat burns, and she almost relents to his touch but the end is inevitable despite the tears that cascade down her cheeks. Not torrents but a single path that unveils her weakness. Cupping a hand to her face, Jaime’s thumb wipes the tear away and the burden that traces his features is almost too much to bare. Almost. “Promise me you’ll save them first.” Unwillingly, a choked sob escapes her throat that’s raw, raw, raw. This direness calls for a smile, and yet she can only wilt. 

“What?” Stunned, yet not surprised. The thought often runs through his mind, she knows, and if the Gods are good they’ll rid him of all shame and guilt. In the Gods are good he’ll grow up and old even as she withers, body alight in the waters she knows too well. 

“Elia and Alyssa are mothers.” Elena’s name weighs nothing in comparison. Forever a sister she’ll be, a daughter and an aunt and a cousin and a friend and a lover but never a mother. Never will she know the tenderness of a babe at her fingertips. And perhaps she wasn’t made for such a thing. Girls like her, who wrap themselves in stardust and constellations and shield themselves from harrowing truths, don’t survive. Elena won’t survive, but her memory won’t be in tatters. Stardust will burn and constellations will collapse. She’ll be loved, and she’ll be missed, but in spite of the skies that have fallen they’ll be safe. “And the babes are children. They must be your first priority.” Elena grips the loose fabric of his tunic, as if his essence will cascade through her fingers should she surrender. And she gazes at him with all earnestness, because Jaime Lannister is a man of virtue and courage and honour. A true knight. His name will be sang in songs and those songs will be true. Jaime Lannister, the man they all want to emulate. 

“Elena,” his voice wavers, and so does he. 

“Promise me.” He traces patterns on her back, pressing her closer towards him, as if attempting to soothe himself. In turn he soothes her, Elena’s eyes fluttering shut for a fleeting moment of bliss. Her words are are a whisper, no longer trembling, but the fear is palpable. As is the heartache. 

“I promise.” A vow sealed by virtue and fear, hope and love. A promise of forever that could never hope to be. Yet now, in his arms with the weight of his words, can she rest. Through the night and the days that’ll come, where she’ll be reduced to a ghost. 

His breath hot against her neck and hands now clutching her waist, Elena leans in to claim his lips with her own and the world ebbs away. It’s slow and soft, comforting in ways that words could never be. A thumb caresses her cheek as their breaths mingle. She runs her fingers down his spine, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between them and Elena can feel the beating of his heart against her chest. Unlike their previous kisses, this may well be a final goodbye as the melding of their lips is tender in a way that words could never be. 

Tantalisingly slowly, Jaime presses his fingers to the laces of her gown and undoes them one by one. Time matters not for the seconds only expand as he grazes her flesh with loving touches, stopping at the crevices above her waist, tracing swirls as he takes her lips for all they are. 

Meanwhile Elena nestles her fingers within Jaime’s golden silk and thread for hair, strands soft against her hands. Her gown falls to her feet, blue silk naught but a crumpled mess. Jaime shifts to unlace her corset but finds that she’s bare of one, Elena having abandoned such tedious pain moons ago. She pries her hands away from his hair that’s messy, separating their lips once more to allow life to seep itself back into her yet she’s never felt more lively than now. Lips swollen, they devour the sight of each other as Jaime bares his chest, the tunic naught but their past. 

Their loving had once held a lingering resistance, never ready to see each other for all they are yet now they crave naught but bare flesh against bare flesh. Tangled limbs and flushed lips, shallow breathing and hearts beating as one soul if only for a fleeting moment. Tentatively, Elena traces lines on his chest with the touch of the broken souls. Grazing his skin, Jaime renders himself of movement as Elena outlines a small scar placed on his shoulder. All resistance dissipates as he neither winces nor recoils under her touch. 

Legs gliding as one, they move towards her feathered bed where Jaime sits at the edge. Lustfully, he pulls Elena into him so that he encircles her wholly, her legs around his waist as their lips collide once more. It’s a fight they each enjoy, of dominance and control. Elena gasps slightly as he loiters kisses down her neck, hands still firmly placed in his tufts of golden hair. She revels in the way he touches her as he slides her shift over her arms so that the upper part of her body is bare for him, but when his mouth moves lower to her newly exposed breasts she pulls away slightly. “What are you doing?” she asks not out of mistrust but inexperience. It suddenly dawns on her that the intimacy she craves is an intimacy Jaime has already indulged herself in. In another life she’d curse him, unleash her wrath but his past matters not. Not now, when he looks at her as if she’s his sun and stars. When his touch is a hybrid of tenderness and love. Jaime may not have plummeted for her as she has for him, or perhaps he has, but the feeling he instigates within her is one she’d never have the grace of finding again. So she’s his to take, body and soul. She’ll bloom only for him, cheeks the most fluorescent of colours painted by the Gods themselves. 

A smile blossoms on Jaime’s face, eyes dancing and her heart swells further as his hands encircle her waist and somehow manages to pull her closer, her hands falling to his chest to steady herself. “Elena Varens,” he purrs smoothly, the sound of her name on his lips, with that grin, may well be her favourite sound, “as pure as a septa,” his eyes never leave hers, “as innocent as a Reach girl during springtime.” The last words come out as a laugh, so carefree and for a moment she wishes they’d melt. Here and now. 

“Prissy southron ponce,” she mocks anger, hands dwindling his locks around her fingers. He only smiles wider. 

All traces of a facade has dissipated, and now they’re in a half-naked glory as he fiddles with her tresses, twirling them around his fingers and pushing strands behind her ears so he can really see her. In a way that would have bards singing for generations. They say naught for some moments, silence enveloping them as they gaze with serenity till Elena breaks it. “They say Rhaegar is the most beautiful man in the kingdoms.” She caresses the temple of his eyes, his hands wandering down to her thighs. 

“And what do you say?” His hands get closer and closer, her desire palpable as she toys with the laces of his breeches. 

“They say beauty is seen through the eyes of the beholder,” she begins with a teasing smile, “you possess a beauty he’s incapable of.” Elena tilts her head, words soft. She takes in a shallow breath, the earnestness of his eyes taking her by storm. His sword hand edges upward towards her waist, fingertips soon skimming her breast to the crevice of her neck, thumb tracing her jawline. 

“You think him more comely? You wound me,” he mocks offence. In truth, Rhaegar’s silver locks pale in comparison to Jaime’s tufts of golden hair. The amethyst hue of his eyes matters not to Jaime’s emerald opals which are alight with a never ending summer where petals bloom and the sky glows with puffs of white magic. There is little comparison, she muses, Rhaegar is only swooned upon due to the mystery that he shrouds himself in. But Jaime is alluring himself, true and brave in ways the dragon prince and traitor to Dorne could never illusion themselves to be. Elena rolls her eyes playfully, Jaime knowing her thoughts entirely. 

His breeches are undone, Jaime’s hand still edging closer and closer to her centre as her breathing shallows. She can almost feel his arousal. “Darkness clings to him like an old friend.” His madness has been manifested into false hope and folly. And thus Rhaegar Targaryen is not the dragon he thinks himself to be, but a lesser man who possesses the folly of all lesser man. She laces a hand back into his hair. “You have a virtue. You’re summer personified.” Green meets brown, his eyes gleaming like the sun as they melt into hers. “He’s the winter we shield ourselves from.” The winter that ignites terror to even the northerners. Elena leans in closer, pressing her lips to his with a vigour he’s initially unable to match. She pulls at his hair, and he traces circles on her thigh which incites a burning desire between her legs. A groan escapes his lips, a moan from hers. Their lips are ferocious against each other’s, far from the tenderness they’d started with. And then his fingers are there, teasing her. 

And then he forces himself to pull away, a slight pout to Elena’s plump lips. “What we’re about to do isn’t virtuous.” He bites his bottom lip, arm cradling her waist tighter and fingers still between her legs. He looks younger, as if all stress has dissipated and turned into joy. And he sounds sorrowful, as if this is a goodbye, as if this is a stain on his honour and it wounds her. Just slightly. 

“You’d regret it?” she asks knowingly. 

At that he just smiles. “They say Ashara Dayne is the most beautiful woman in the kingdoms.” He sounds unimpressed, and it’s startling. Ashara entices men with a single glance, bewitching them as they profess their love while she laughs heartily. And Jaime had seen her, if only once, at the Tourney. And then he thrusts a finger into her folds, watching her intently. The pleasure is almost overwhelming as her back arches, wanton moans escaping her lips that might well wake the entire Keep. Jaime smirks, increasing his pace and entering two more fingers. 

“The maiden with the haunting violet eyes,” she manages to say through her ragged breathing. Jaime’s lips play with her breasts as he’d intended to before she’d so rudely interrupted him, suckling at her buds, tongue feral. Elena grasps some strands of his hair as if he’s an anchor and she a sinking ship, sin in her eyes. 

He looks up, overtaken with desire yet features etched in affection. “They aren’t haunting, they’re just purple.” She’s always been fond of his blunt way with words, how unapologetically himself he is in a land of pretenders. The affect of his fingers is easily seen across her porcelain features as she wears affection and craving. “Yet your eyes resemble stars against the sunlight and the earth against the moonlight. It’s like they’re another world.” And his lips are back on her neck, teeth grazing her skin with tenderness and longing, fingers still within her and a hand cupping the slope between her neck and shoulders. 

“You charm me, Ser Jaime,” she says lowly, his touch burning her because he’s fire incarnate. 

“I’d hope to do more than that.” Elena can feel his smirk against her flesh, and she giggles at the sensation that floods warmth into her. 

“You’re the only one I’d give my virtue to.” Shes scared to look at him, as if her words could be possibly be a disappointment because of how true they are. She blooms under his touch, in ways she’d been unable to imagine. He slows the pace of his fingers, as if he doesn’t know what to say and she could possibly weep at the sentiment. 

But he does know what to say. And he doesn’t hesitate. “And I you, Princess Elena.” His words are draped in sincerity and affinity and warmth. He couldn’t possibly be saying anything but the truth. It incites a feeling she’d never be able to describe with words alone. For one to understand this feeling they’d have to feel it themselves, and Elena knows the rarity of it so she blossoms further. 

And then a soft smile takes over her pretty features. “Jaime Lannister,” she says like a sweet song, as if this is a dance they’ll always have, “as pure as a septon,” his breath is still hot against her neck and the desire increase tenfold, “as innocent as a Reach boy during summertime.” He brings his forehead to rest against hers, the tips of their noses touching as his fingers continue to work their magic. The lazy grin that makes ladies swoon is etched on his features as he brings their lips closer. The intimacy they crave is but moments away. His fingers cease, gripping her waist with ferocity as the kiss deepens. Her fingers run down his spine, nails digging into his flesh in what may well draw blood. 

“Sadistic snow bitch,” he utters once they’re apart before he lightly pushes her onto the bed. 

Donned in naught but blossoming yearning, he takes her lips for all they are and Elena can feel his arousal as she flourishes beneath him. For all their inexperience they don’t lack passion as they become drunk on desire. A liaison of delicate porcelain and molten gold, they fit together, mind and matter, without the lingering resistance that’s intertwined their fates together, like a crisscross of ghosts. He moves against her with grace and skill, lips taking them both to a frenzy of ecstasy. The euphoria she feels is frightening, because this can never be. They can’t melt into the sheets and each other but for now Jaime is her golden knight and her heart, the golden halo she’d worn falling to pieces. 

For the first night since, peace welcomes her. In his arms, she finds everything she’s lost. 

✧───✧───✧

Stained with the dragon’s blood, his sword glistens and Jaime’s stomach churns with dread, insides collapsing entirely as Aerys’ cold corpse stares back at him with dismay. The madness in his eyes can no longer dance to the fire the Targaryens prided themselves in, only in death does he look sane, humane. Like a kindly old man Jaime had slaughtered in cold blood. It was him or the thousands, the knight despairs with shallow breaths. It was him or my father, and somehow that incites a heavier feeling in his chest. A hollowness, perhaps, as if the old man will be missed. A void, as if he’s ever been truly innocent. And yet shame encases him wholly. The golden armour he’s cladded in is perhaps the smallest sliver of honour he has now. Where prestige and pride had bowed, honour and duty have unravelled. Virtue, Elena would say. 

And he sits atop the throne of blood with every ounce of terror a boy of seventeen can feel, eyes fearful first for himself then for for Elena because she’d been here. Where is she? he wants to scream. Only Ned Stark strides across the hall of dragon skulls atop his destrier, disgust etched on his stoic features. Can he see the fear in my eyes? he wonders. Can he see that my maiden’s heart has broken? Green meets grey and terror meets judgement. He couldn’t possibly understand. So underneath that horror he musters up an armour of pride and arrogance, leaving Eddard Stark with one last snarky remark before he runs to Maegor’s Holdfast, Elena’s name on his lips. 

Red shrouds every crevice in sight, the walls of the chambers he’d locked Elia and her children in smeared with the blood of the innocent. The door had been broken down, and in the room lies five bodies and he feels so sick he can’t breathe. His insides collapse, organs shutting down as a choked sob escapes his throat. His heart races in his chest, too fast and too slow simultaneously. His fingers are numb, and he can feel nothing as dread encases him body and soul. Grief is sewn into his surroundings and finds a home within him. Flames of a dying fire are put to rest; golden eyes, souls of the night turning into ashes with the memory of them seamed into him. The babes are unrecognisable, skulls smashed in and little Rhaenys’ guts spew on the floor. Elia’s hair is bloody, golden skin nothing but red. Elena’s neck is smeared with red marks, white gown naught but red. 

It’s a tangle of ebony tresses and silver locks coated with blood so thick the stench makes its way to his nostrils, the bodies decaying before his very eyes. The bruised and battered bodies of those he’d sworn to protect will haunt him for the lifetime he doesn’t deserve. It was five against thousands, he’d been damned either way. Each result would have seen the slaughter of innocents. Innocents he’d sworn to protect because he’s a knight. He’d chosen knighthood over the kingsguard, he’d chosen salvation over sadism, and yet the results are crushing. It shouldn’t have been them, it shouldn’t have been them, it shouldn’t have been them. Elia whose warmth he’d attributed to his Lady mother’s, Elena’s whose wits he’d attributed to the Lady Joanna, the children who’d coo at the mere sight of him and wrap themselves around his legs, who’d incite laughter when he’d been so scared. It shouldn’t have been them. 

I’m sorry I failed. 

His heart shatters before his very eyes, and his vision collapses, blurring as tears fall down his cheeks. The Gods are watching, Elena had said, and he’s so agonised he can hardly breathe. He can’t walk, he can’t feel, he can’t talk. Yet it would be folly to blame the Gods unless the mountain is suddenly immortal, unless his father is suddenly prayed to. 

It’s a grief he’d never be able to explain, one that embeds itself into him so deeply it may well be perpetual. How can he explain that his life had been a crisscross of hope and folly and ignorance, slowly morphing into a path of harrowing realisations that had set his world apart. Yet in spite of it all he’d had a purpose that had been so deeply ingrained into him, as if he’d known them in ways no one had ever known him. Once, he had thought himself to be broken but this is so much more. His purpose has gone, his soul wilted, his dreams crushed under the setting sun and all he can see is the truth he’s been blind to. His heart has always been of glass and now it caves in on itself, creating a hollowness so deep he’s unable to breathe. The numbness pounding his brain, the salty tears that flow unchecked from his eyes, the shear nothingness that now takes hold of his being threatens to engulf him entirely. His legs buckle, knees sinking into the hard ground as he says a final goodbye to those he’d loved and lost. 

The grief that envelops him doesn’t cloud his vision and so he can see the slight movement of one of the bodies. It’s Elena, he realises with gaping sorrow, her gown ripped through and marks lining her throat. Her eyes are glazed over as if death has already embraced her, and yet there’s that sliver of life that hadn’t been there before. It’s like she’s fighting to live, or fighting to die. But before Jaime can fully process the atrocities before him he carries her in his arms and she’s so still. So dreadfully still and silent when he wants nothing more than for her to whisper a sly remark. Blood coats itself onto his fingers, his armour, his heart as he yells for the maester, feet light but chest heavy with mourning he’s never known before. He’d never even missed his mother like this, and it’s bone crushing. 

Four days. Four days it takes for her to rise from the spell of death she’d been trapped in. And they’d been the weightiest days he’s ever known. In that time word has been spread of the brutalisation of Elia Martell and her children, of the survival of Elena Varens and the impending arrival of Robert Baratheon. And since then he’s been welcomed with more heart wrenching news. Stefan Varens had been murdered in cold blood in his ancestral home, just a boy nearing sixteen taken by the cruelties of man. A martyr, they call him, yet he’d just been a boy who was destined for so much more. 

The world reeks of death, he reeks of death. 

Elena’s hair falls around her face, chest falling rising with a rhythmic ease. He grasps her cold hand with melancholy, silent tears falling to the feathered bed. Despite escaping the clutches of death, all traces of serenity have left her and she’s now another casualty of her war regardless of her impending survival. Confining himself to her side, he’s gaunt and hollow and broken and tired and terrified. Cersei and his father had imposed on this solitude only to be met with a scathing glare, his silence speaking for him as he’d all but shoved them out, devoid of the tenderness he’s come to embrace like an old friend. 

And then she wakes, eyelids fluttering open with her lips pressed into a firm line that causes a physical ache. And he has to speak the unspoken truths that are harrowing in word and nature. The words that still embeds the fear of the Gods into him. So he tells her, of Elia and Rhaenys and Aegon and Rosario and Stefan. She doesn’t shed a tear, nor do any words escape her lips but her grip of his fingers tighten with the ferocity of a thousand cruel gods. 

✧───✧───✧

The morrow passes, the sun rising to skies of drab oranges and lifeless reds as if they don black veils of their own as there’s now a perpetual darkness that engulfs King’s Landing that’s more than the cries of the night. Whispers scurry through the passageways and halls of the Keep, and whispers are seldom borne of fallacies so the words said beneath the wind can only be true. They say Ser Jaime Lannister had kissed life back into his Princess Elena Varens, the clutches of death embracing them both till Ser Jaime had fought the wards off with the skill of a thousand men. They say Ser Jaime loves his Princess Elena so, that he’ll rip apart his White Cloak and ride into the sunset with his lady love. 

One soul, one flesh, one heart, now and forever. 

The story is sang as a song, whispered to the stars with words of sorrow draped in delirium. Unfinished melodies of two star crossed lovers who’d fought off a land of evils to hold each other’s hearts within the palms of their hands, reverie encasing every word for Jaime Lannister and Elena Varens are now reduced to characters in a story they don’t yet know the pages of. Molten gold and delicate porcelain, the knight and the maiden fair who couldn’t possibly endure all this tragedy for a happy ending. Two more sad stories whose paths had crisscrossed into each other’s and now they bleed for an eternity. 

Alyssa’s death had initially ignited folly from Elena, the Princess willing her sister to come back to life when she’d already been taken. Hope had been a beam held by the skies in those days that seem to be centuries ago. When Elena had had constellations in her eyes and stardust touching the tips of her hair, when her mind hadn’t been one of monsters and her touch one of death. She’d wept into Jaime’s chest for stability and security but her tears are no longer. 

Grief always surrounds her and sadness makes a home in her. Neither gold nor the golden boy, the sun nor the sun kissed boy can give her what she needs. Jaime couldn’t begin to understand that her life has been a glass box that’s caved in on her, every insignificant glass shard bleeding her dry. That this isn’t the collapse of her insides — this is the moon withering and sun shrivelling, the stardust of celestial bodies smeared on her bloodstained lips and the implosions of nebulas coated on her skin. Death had touched her, and she had lost. 

Jaime is a sunken version of himself, gaunt and hollowed out as his innocence has been stolen from him under the twilight. His smile no longer reaches his eyes that she loves so, and a core of Valyrian steel surrounds his heart because he mustn’t break. Kingslayer, they dare not say to his face. The soiled Princess, they dare not utter in open alleyways yet their words strangle the life of them. Their shame is nothing more than words in the wind, their pain matters not. 

The arrival of Robert Baratheon is meant to be a joyous occasion with the sound of fanfare ringing through the walls of the Red Keep as knights embossed with the sigil of a crowned stag descend upon Aegon’s Hill. Streams of gold and silver and polished steel, a pride of bannermen and their wives, of sworn swords and freeriders. Banners of gold sway with the wind, emblazoned with the stag of Baratheon. The clamour forces its way into the chambers Elena and Jaime have not yet left, terrified to face the ghosts they’ve abandoned. 

Jaime looks at her now, all earnestness and heartache and shame etched on their pretty features. When once their glances would be of ardent longing and fervent desire, this is of understanding. A promise, even. And so the door of red oak is unlocked. 

The pair are met with the stoic faces of Ned and Jon Arryn who may well bare grief of their own. Ser Barristan the Bold stands beside Robert Baratheon — a man whose eyes glint of cruelty, stature large in comparison to Jaime but no such grace clings to him. Adorned with luxurious silks embossed with his sigil, he’s plain. Conventionally handsome with ashen black hair and cruel blue eyes, he lacks the boyish charm Jaime holds so effortlessly. He lacks the virtue, the goodness, the heart. And a man absent of heart is naught but a monster. Tywin Lannister stands beside his daughter, Cersei, with pride etched on his withered face. Jaime’s twin is donned in a gown of emerald to bring out her eyes, and though they call her the light of the west Elena is unable to understand the whispers. There’s nothing light about her, like her father she is all darkness. The picture of Jaime, but the very opposite in nature. 

They may well have immortalised themselves. 

The air is taken out of the room as she steps with nimble feet, Jaime trailing behind her and he looks as a king should, courageous and brave and gentle. No word is said, and most are unable to meet her eyes save Ned and Lord Arryn. Elena visibly bristles, her gaze prickly as it lands on Jaime’s father who holds no sort of shame. He stands tall, and a sickness encases her that Jaime can feel, standing so close. Perhaps it’s improper, but Elena’s been shed of all propriety as they all know. So let them conjure up tales that would once exist, in another life. 

The bodies are broken and bruised and bloody, ebony ringlets smeared with blood and strands of silver hair melded with molten mortality. The babes are unrecognisable, heads caved in and stomach hanging out as if it’s nothing more than a tapestry embroidered by her own hand. It’s harrowing, the blood that stains the floor and the hands of all those who surround her. Elia’s dressed in a Dornish gown, she’d always been unyielding in that sense. She’d never been a Targaryen, only ever a Martell. Elia Martell, Princess of Dorne. 

Elena inhales through her mouth and exhales through her nose, head pounding as a choked sob threatens to escape her lips. Weakness, it could be seen as, and yet she doesn’t care. Her weakness is a ghost story told to children in the dooms of the night. At the very least she should be able to unveil the black veil that holds her like her mother, that suffocates her slowly but surely, that leaves her seeing red, red, red. Jaime wouldn’t begrudge of that, would he? Do they see children? she wonders with blurry vision. Do they know themselves to be the monsters that mothers shield their children from? 

She goes to Elia first, who’d shielded her from the cruel taunts of the king and loved her as only a sister could. Her body is laid on a table of a sorts that’s covered in white fabric so Elena kneels by her side and whispers faintly, but the silence is one so damning that all can hear. “Arthur never deserved you, nor Rhaegar.” It hadn’t been love, but it’d been something akin to companionship. Elia had been a woman of steel, no naivety clouding her vision as it had done for Elena. Strength had shrouded her and now only fragility can encase her. She’d done her duty, giving her all till she’d had nothing left to give. And she’d died for it. Rhaegar had not saved her, and Arthur had betrayed his Princess. Her words are soft, ringing across the walls due to the pounding silence. Elena presses her plump lips to the forehead of the sister she’d loved so, letting her lips linger for a moment longer than necessary as the coldness passes through her being. “Ragnar would have made you a queen, rest well Princess.” Whispered into her ears, as if the woman who’d been more sun than human can hear the heartache that lies behind her smile. 

Elia’s corpse up close had taken the air out of her lungs but the babes are another matter entirely. Only now do Rosa — whose name had been Visenya but Elia had always called her Rosario — and Aegon bare a resemblance as only twins can. Their faces are disfigured, his wisps of hair no longer seen and her golden eyes caved in. No longer does she bare a resemblance to Elia in a way that had been uncanny, for their eyes had been the very same and their skin had shone with the love of Dorne. In certain lights, Rosa had been Elia. Meanwhile Rhaenys had had her sweet yet unyielding nature, Aegon had held her charm. He’d looked the part of his father well enough but he’d been his mother’s son through and through. 

Rotting flesh shrouds the crevices of their upper bodies, and the stench reaches Elena’s nostril so that she can only take it. Because if she were to recoil then she’d be recoiling at the babes who’d filled the void within her chest that had opened up at Maksim’s death, not just the stench. And that would be far too much to bare. Because at the very least they deserve a sendoff. But she just trembles further at the sight of them. This isn’t how they should be remembered, devoid of everything that’d made them whole. It’s as if the wind protrudes her thoughts, nipping at her flesh as she takes shallow breath after shallow breath. Their frames are so much smaller than they were and Elena’s heart aches for the children they were and people they’ll never grown to be. Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses. They’ve been reduced to nothing more than the children of a madman and it’s maddening, she muses grimly, when they’d been her sun and stars. “Balerion misses you all,” she says through a hybrid of laughter and tears as the black cat can no longer be found scurrying through the halls of this haunted house. 

The thought of pressing her lips upon the bloodied ruins encases Elena with dread and the disgust she feels towards herself forms its own armour as she finally holds the stomach to see it all for what it is. And it’s the very picture of her nightmares, a choked sob escapes her throat before she can stifle it so she presses her fingers to her lips which no longer speak of princes and knights of days past, steadying her breathing and laying a kiss atop her fingertips which had once been sprinkled with stardust. And then she presses her fingers to the flesh of those she’d loved as her own heart, eyes fluttering shut for a moment as she imagines a world in which they’d loved instead of her. A world in which Jaime had saved them and fled to the borders of Dorne where he’d be welcomed with open arms. A world in which Stefan would blossom and A Godless Man would see the light of day. A world in which all that Alyssa had endured would be naught but ashes, and she’d be here with her babe. An idyllic world, without her tainted touch. 

And then she turns around, black veil swaying with her feet as she’s met with Cersei Lannister whose lips are upturned in a smile that lacks all of Jaime’s warmth. The golden knight, meanwhile, had said goodbyes of his own. Lowly, he’d spoken to each of them and for a meagre second the gauntness had relented. He’d spoken to them as if they were living, of things only he and the children had shared. When he’d turned he’d shielded himself from her, tears threatening to fall to his cheeks. But now, facing his twin, he’s the very epitome of ice. He’d bristled by her side, and all can see that his coldness wounds Cersei whose ego had broken if only for a moment. 

“My condolences for your loss.” Her voice is strained, and rather than looking to Elena in earnest her eyes are fixated upon Jaime, with some kind of expectation, who refuses to meet her gaze. Which loss? Elena muses. There’ve been so many. Those she’d once treasured are now reduced to memories that dance with the wind. Summer children with winter in their hearts and spring in their smiles, the embodiment of the oceans with stars in their eyes and skin kissed by the dizzying rays. Those she’d orbited as the moon does the sun all dead by twilight. Shadows that linger in the depths of her mind forevermore. It's a strange thing to lose those you’d once held and had, like a limb torn from your body without the chance to save it. The door that was once open and welcoming is locked and disinviting. They had all left her; Elena may well be alone. 

“False courtesies make dull men witty but they keep dull women passionate,” she replies dryly. Stuck between the sweetness of her bones and the sourness of her veins Elena is unable to fabricate a facade of apathy that would drown her further and further. Though instead of red, red, red blurring her vision she’d see naught but blue, blue, blue. Her words are shrouded in a sorrowful casket that looms over her like an unraveling tapestry, pieces of silk thread strangling the life out of her. And she sees the affect of her words as Cersei Lannister wears incredulity and anger. Soft ivory she may have been but an armour of steel builds itself. Cersei has no armour. Jaime’s glamour dissipates for a moment, stifling a chuckle at his sister’s expense. Her cheeks are flushed with rage and brows creased at the mockery. It makes Elena’s blood boil. Cersei’s pride has been wounded and now she looks as if an oblivion had taken her soul. Yet Elena’s is black and putrid, weeping with sorrow. Sadness always surrounds her and torrents of grief make a home within her. Delicate ivory erodes into unyielding bronze that neither gold nor the golden boy, the sun nor the sun kissed woman, can soften. How could Cersei Lannister even begin to understand that all the skies have fallen atop her shoulders, the weight of the world dragging her down into a bottomless abyss of nothingness? That this isn’t just the collapse of her insides but the shrivelling of the sun and the withering of the moon. That the stardust smeared upon her lips has faded to dust that she chokes upon, that’s she’s burning when she hasn’t yet soared. Her eyes reflect the toil of life, from the blaze of passion and the femininity that sometimes overflows. 

“A terrible tragedy, truly,” the witch begins, voice coated in rotting flesh and tone coloured in false sweetness as her humourless smile widens, revealing the dimples of her cheeks. In these moments all sense of time is lost as the homely grief somehow makes Elena appear to be younger. More graceful. Jaime inhales and exhales, awaiting a terrible taunt. Elena stares blankly. “Should I have fallen to such cravenness I’d rather have died.” Theres a feral fiend beneath Elena’s chest, one that lacerates at her lungs and tears at her humanity. One that grows amidst the darkness and craves vengeance and justice. A fiend she’s unable to name, that preys on the blood of the wicked. It’d break apart every lone brick of the Red Keep, devour the rotten stench of King’s Landing. It longs to drown the gold of Casterly Rock in the blood of its overlords, to unleash a storm upon the stormlands that floods the lands. It longs to break the fickle bones of Robert Baratheon and set Tywin Lannister alight on the largest funeral pyre of all. Elena settles for digging her nails so far into her clenched hands that blood is drawn, cascading down the granite floors. For the first time in days is she able to feel a feeling other than crushing numbness and harrowing sadness and definite terror. 

Pain. The sensation that makes her world turn. 

“A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of a delirious head.” Delirious, ambitious, aspiring. The words could so easily roll off of Elena’s tongue yet ambitions and aspirations are the cursed things that cause the deepest follies of man. Delirious, however, would be the perfect description of the lioness who unveils her claws so effortlessly as if deceit is second nature. Elena has known girls such as Cersei Lannister for a lifetime, girls who build themselves on the words of those whose words don’t matter. Deternised to be naught but the best while self awareness runs thin. “May your brittle crown bow before itself,” Elena finishes cooly, a reverie of her father’s bronze crown encasing her. He’d forged smaller circlets and crowns to resemble the one he’d wear so elegantly, Elena’s nestled within her hair and Alyssa’s sent to Verona atop her raven tresses. The centrepiece of Elena’s circlet is an amethyst mounted on an elven focal, a purple to gold wire in the pattern of a braid encircling the crystal to form the headpiece. Meanwhile Alyssa’s had been much simpler, an emerald cantered upon an elven focal, encircled with shining silver. 

“I trust you will attend the wedding, Lady Elena?” The smile is still plastered on her face, yet she’s strained. 

“Princess,” Jaime says with the fierceness of a lion before Elena can correct the lioness who bristles. His voice is unyielding, as if all traces of boyhood have been shed. It saddens hear but his strength gives her strength, one she can’t abstain from showing. 

Elena curtly nods to Jaime without affection, though there’s a deep layer of affinity in her eyes were one to look hard enough. “Queen to a King whose heart breathes another’s name,” she says laughingly, sparing a glance towards Robert who is still unable to meet her gaze, “as is the worth of a lioness.” Cersei flushes, and Elena offers a sickeningly sweet smile of her own which even a blind man could see hurts her physically. “Where bitterness is mixed with brute,” Elena continues again, with more of the steel that shrouds her, “there is too tedious an accord of council.” While Verona had prospered under the reign of her father all the bards had naught to sing of Aerys’ rule. Robert Baratheon will drag a sinking ship even further down. “I would rather bid my time with the servants,” she nods curtly. 

“Princess,” Cersei spits out with the venom of a thousand snakes, “as my dear brother reminded so cordially.” Jaime’s eyes are just as cold as unrelenting, her words do nothing to him and Elena is glad of it. Such goodness should not be tainted by such bitterness. “What are you now, I wonder, with all Kings of Varens under sodden earth?” Her glare is one so scathing Elena might have looked away were it not for the amusement that she feels. 

“It would be a great injustice to think that I have a feeling of indifference towards my motherland due to the black veil that haunts me and my kinsman alike. I have as much reason as Ser Jaime to feel. Everyday of my life, such as the value of the blood which flows in my veins, and it is only from prudence that at times I abstain from showing my pride. Through my veins runs the blood of Kings and Queens who’d been unyielding in spite of the flatterers and fools who’d attempted to break them down. Through my veins runs the blood of my father who’d been as beloved as he was wise, and that wisdom still breathes. I am the Princess of Verona till death do us part.” Till death do us part. One heart, one soul, one flesh. Now and forever. 

“I thought of your brothers as mine own, Princess.” Ned’s formality slightly wounds her though she understands it all too well. Now he is Lord Eddard of House Stark, who’d played a part in the destruction of her House and the ones she’d loved as her own heart. Some shattered part of Elena longs to resent him for the actions of Robert and Lyanna and Tywin, all three of whom had damned a realm and yet the true sincerity etched on his features may well haunt her. Where Jaime is unyielding in his beliefs that he did the right thing Ned is unyielding in his beliefs of honour that must not unravel. Is this honourable? she wants to scream. “I shall mourn for them as I do for Brandon.” Elena’s memory of the roasting flesh will never render her of any peace, the look of death that Brandon had been bestowed with had truly made him ice personified when he’d been akin to fire incarnate. Brandon Stark had been reduced to mud. 

“I regret that I am not able to say the same of our sisters, my Lord.” Ice colours her tone and fire burns her throat, bile rising. The mere mention of Alyssa causes her stomach to churn. But there’s peace in Alyssa’s final moments, for she had been rendered of pain when Stefan hadn’t. 

“I will find Lyanna,” he replies solemnly. 

“In the same casket as Elia, perhaps.” All of Elena’s attention is aimed towards the false king who looks murderous. 

“You dare insult the memory of my betrothed?” Robert bellows, features contorting into the rage set in her own heart. The veins pop out of his forehead, and every ounce of charm and comeliness leaves him because the man sat before her is the very essence of a monster. A madman. The second coming of the madman Jaime had damned himself to save the realm of. No longer does he look an attracting prospect to would be Queens, for he embodies the face of her nightmares. He’s a beast, feral, untamed, unguarded, who longs to bathe in the blood of children who’d done no wrong. A fiend who longs to drown himself in the tears of the innocent because his precious Lyanna had been repulsed by him. Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar Targaryen, two sides of the same coin of madness for one is living and the other is dead. Righteous in wrath he may be but the kingdoms will suffer for this. 

“Your betrothed who’d hated you so that she bled a realm?” she asks dryly. 

“I loved her and Rhaegar took her from me. It’s a mercy on the world to be rid of his dragonspawn.” His. For the first time do years threaten to fall from her cheeks and onto the granite floor, Elena longs to allow her weakness to unravel and evaporate on the floor so she can have no tragic bloodline to show for itself. 

A flash of agony passes and the veil of neutrality stands again, always reaching higher, never quite at its peak. A song of ice and fire, for the fire that burns her hollow chest to become but ashes on a barren land and the ice that twists everything she’s ever loved about herself, the chill of her voice one for the ages. “Men do not relish the shield wall. They do not rush to death's embrace. You look ahead and see the overlapping shields, the helmets, the glint of axes and spears and swords, and you know you must go into the reach of those blades, into the place of death, and it takes time to summon the courage, to heat the blood, to let the madness overtake caution. The battlefield is the place of your rebirth but danger will reckon once more and the sun will rise on the east. Ravens will fly amok and the dark wings will hold their dark words. Kings drop like flies these days, and your blood shall one day fall like rainwater to nourish the lands you’ve beaten and bruised. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” A collective breath is taken, but to say the words on her heart is nothing short of exhilarating. Verona remembers, Dorne remembers. And they won’t forget. 

“Cease her,” he commands to Ser Barristan the un-Bold. 

“Robert,” Ned says gravely. 

“Courage, I have shown it for years: you think I shall lose it when my suffering is to end?” she laughs bitterly. 

“No one touches her.” Jaime steps forward to shield her from the oncoming Barristan Selmy, unsheathing his sword should he fight a final fight. 

“You are a kingsguard,” Cersei spits out. 

“Protect the innocent. Those are the sacred words of knighthood. I am no longer a knight should I lay my life towards the second coming of Aerys.” His voice grows taller through the walls of the Great Hall and his resolve strengthens to emulate that of Valyrian steel. No longer does he look his seventeen years, nor does he look aged. Cladded in his golden armour with his White Cloak atop, he looks every inch the knight he’s destined to be only the circumstances are so dire that even she feels the terror of it all when she’s felt naught but numbness. 

“Watch your words Kingslayer, I am no Targaryen.” 

“Kingslayer, you say with malice and yet my dishonour is the reason you sit atop your throne. My honour is beyond repair but the Kingslayer is righteous in wrath,” he says as though Jaime Lannister and the Kingslayer are different entities because Kingslayer is a title said with mockery. Jaime’s virtue had prevailed and all the wise folk can see is the blood of an old man who’d been so deranged he’d longed to have the largest funeral pyre of all while reducing Westeros to smoke and ashes once more, “and he should not fear to become one twice over.” The cutting edge to his voice makes him all the more fearful. A man whose legend is derived off of myth writing another story once more. 

“JAIME,” Tywin bellows. 

His eyes are of the harshest winters as he faces his father. No longer does he look the boy who’d longed for the approval of a man who’d belittled him for life, he looks like Jaime. Just Jaime. “From this day forth I am only your son in name.” His voice is a hybrid of calamity and coolness. “Jaime Lannister,” he says through a bitter chuckle which earns the withering glare of Ned, “conflicted between knighthood and kingsguard,” Elena then sends a scathing glare to Ned whose brows are creased in confusion, “damned either way. I am my mother’s son and my mother would have been ashamed of you.” His voice cracks, that boy who’d knelt arising for the final time. 

“The bold, they call you, and yet you do nothing as innocents are slaughtered in the name of king’s justice. It seems as though you’ve shoved your honour so far up you’re arse you don’t even know who you’re serving. A Targaryen loyalist, under the rule of a Baratheon. And yet I am the false knight.” His eyes pierce into Ser Barristan who has the shame to look away. Elena’s loathing only deepens. 

“Your name is bound in honour and yet you devote yourself to a man who shits on it. Ned Stark, ever the honourable coward.” Jaime’s face shrivels in disgust, the last word sees his voice echo throughout the halls. 

“You mean well, yet your incompetency will see you dead,” he says to Jon Arryn for none of them are too familiar with the Warden of the East but his association is enough to burn holes within their chest. 

“You’d forged your crown of poison and steel, the foundation built long before your time. First it had been Rhaegar, for the crown he could give you. And then Ragnar, yet you’d always loathed him. A better man than Rhaegar by far, yet he’d been the second son, offering nothing but the ruins of Sumerhall and the means of making you a Princess. And whether conscientiously or not, you’d enthroned yourself as queen of a higher mystery to the world beyond. Which bows itself, and will forever bow, before a broken crown, and the stainless sceptre of womanhood. I should’ve been the man, you’d say, yet those who appear to be the most sanctified are the worst. A mother of glass and father of stone, I suppose we’ve always been damned yet you’d twist my agony to be a weakness. My compassion to our brother to be a weakness. You’ve always been bitter and hateful, and now you’re set to wed a man just as you are. Hearts beating for another, yet names intertwined forevermore. Gold will be your shroud and black will be your bane.” Jaime’s words are draped in a kind of sorrow, as if they’d been leeched out of him, clawing at his ribcage because the beast had been let out. The golden twins no longer look alike, a softness encasing Jaime mixed with unyielding anger while Cersei looks as if she’s been trampled on by a thousand white knights. Her eyes lose the spark for a moment and a hurt passes through her, as if unspoken words are being shared between the Lannisters. 

“My vows of the kingsguard are long broken. I will not give my life for another madman of a king.” The heat in her chest rises, and one look in earnest at Jaime tells her that right now no one can touch her. He may well be a lion personified with that fury behind his eyes. Yet he looks at her with tenderness and for the first time in what feels like centuries Elena is safe. Wordlessly, they leave the Hall. The White Cloak stained with invisible blood is now ripped from Jaime’s golden armour and within the grasp of his palm where they’ll see it burn, burn, burn. 

Silence is all they leave behind. 

That night they stand before Blackwater Bay where the water ripples continuously. The surface falls and rises with a rhythmic ease, as steady as Elena’s breathing as she and Jaime watch as if hypnotised by the currents that are a tantalising hue of blue, engulfed by blackness under the twilight. Everything is dark, stars no longer singing and sun no longer shining. The moon’s light is dim, shrouded by the clouds as if they weep as a blanket of rainwater falls. The ebony of Elena’s tresses blends perfectly against the colourless tapestry, Jaime’s golden hair the only light to be seen from miles away as if he’s shrouded in stardust, constellations in his eyes. 

And so Jaime and Elena gaze with fascination as flames of a dying fire engulf the cloak that had taken his innocence. The remnants are devoured by the orange and yellow embers, glowing embers that leap and twirl in a firery dance, twinkling like stars in the hot swirling air before cascading to earth like the gleeful fire fiends they are. Flickering, weaving under the spell it was sparked into. A shrieking ray of melting gas purges out of the flame's capturing heat. Smouldering, roaring, flickering flames, eager, hungry, rampaging, sweeping, cinders and ashes and sparks that engulf and explode and devour, thick acrid smell of the smoke, enormous appetite of the flames, consumed in flames, terrible destruction, like a great famished beast devouring everything in it's path and belching out black smoke. Fire is the most beautiful weapon of them all. It shines with all its glory; later they would describe the fire that beat them back as a wall of intense heat that threatened to burn their very lungs, cooking them from the inside. 

✧───✧───✧

The pair fall into a frightful slumber as their backs slightly graze the other’s, monsters in their mind. Strips of pink and blue graze the skyline, Elena imagines, painted on a tapestry of a blue that fades into the night sky to form the perfect pencil sketch. Glaring rays are naught but a vivid dream as bleakness consumes the Capitol through the cries of the night and weeping of the wind. Elena and Jaime are but shadows in the breeze — the only evidence of their existence being the pain they indulge through cracked lips. A dying light, a dying age. A new dawn awaits. 

The new dawn that awaits is one as harrowing as it is unwelcome. Tensions arise from the smallest of flames and relationships are severed due to the nature of war and men. Whispers flicker in the wind and a deep sense of mourning is instilled within the castle walls. Black veils are laid out on the floors of the halls and the grasses of the gardens, only now has Elena noticed the melancholy that leeches nobles and servants alike. The rebellion can’t be traced to good versus evil, courage versus cowardice, virtue versus vice. Many a battles had taken place under the same stars, and many a men died. No one had escaped unscathed, for everyone has lost someone. 

Ned had seethed at the unjust murders of her own heart, demanding his king to see Tywin Lannister at the Wall for his crimes against man. Alas, words were said and bonds severed due to the treachery that sits Robert Baratheon atop his throne. And the Stark Lord had left in search of his sister. Ned truly is a man of the calmest winters, a careful yet compassionate man who indulged himself in pretty prayers and useless Gods. His heart is shown on his face nor does his anger simmer as most mens’. It builds, like a tidal wave that washes over himself before it can claim any man or woman. Like that, he’s always been a feeling fool. 

She and Jaime break their fasts alone, allowing the servants to gossip of the love affair that takes place behind closed doors. A forbidden one at that, of a disgraced kingsguard and a soiled princess. It leaves Elena spouting curses upon whichever poor soul who serves them with their curious eyes. The love still lingers but any trace of an affair had died the night they’d been severed of innocence, and yet only they can understand the pain in one another’s heart and so they indulge themselves in each other’s presence. 

The gardens have since been leeched of all loveliness they’d held as Elia’s presence is one so lovely amongst the thorny roses and wilting petals. The fragrance of the flowers blend with the chill of the air and the scent of the ocean that drifts far from the shores. Faintly, Elena can hear the melody of the song she had come to know. A ballad now, of sorrow and despair. 

“I’ve never liked winter roses,” she says absentmindedly. 

“I do recall your fondness of opium poppies,” he replies nostalgically. 

“Have you ever been blessed with snow before?” she asks curiously. 

“Never,” he says, deep in thought as he probably imagines the blankets of snowflakes that inspire a lifetime of chill within brittle bones and tender hearts. 

“Many have never seen the coastlines before,” Elena adds almost whimsically. Jaime’s brows crease, as if there’s an underlying message to her words when that’s all they are, words. He looks pretty like that, against the sunlight, in a rare moment of peace, green eyes deep in thought as if he’s a philosopher. And what liars they and poets are, to think all a woman craves is tenderness. The weeks have seen Elena crisscrossed with such a word too many a time. Yet before reality had cascaded upon them all she’d craved naught but sensuality and an all consuming passion. How times change in the blink of an eye. 

“I miss swimming,” Jaime eventually says with youthful longing. Elena’s always appreciated the smell of the ocean water and the feel of the tides upon her feet and dampening the skirt of her gown yet swimming has never endeared her. It feels as if the torrents of water drag her deeper into the coves of the seawater where wailing women lie beside ship wreckages and other tragedies. But the coldness of it all had always endeared her, a stark contrast to the boiling waters of baths that’d leave red blotches on her flesh. She’s always tanned easily and yet the summer sun has kept her pale complexion. It comforts her, to know she still looks a northerner. 

Before Elena can say anything further, a commotion is drawn into the Red Keep and so they follow the hoard into the castle walls with morbid curiosity. Her features are etched in disdain, awaiting further horror because the days are scarce of hope. Meanwhile Jaime’s features are etched in hope and she wonders when her maiden’s heart had broken. Has Jaime’s maiden’s heart mended itself? she muses, though it’s entirely possible that it’d never broken and strangely enough the thought fills her with a foreign warmth. 

Instead, they’re met with the corpse of the wolf maiden. Not directly under their vision but the murmurings rise, of how Robert Baratheon wears his grief like a crown and all sense of hostility between he and Ned is lost as they indulge themselves in mourning. They say the southron ponce had wanted her buried in this city of overwhelming stench, and though she’s unable to to bring forth a fondness for Lyanna she’s thankful that Ned had the nerve to refuse. 

Eyes devoid of any feeling, Elena stands central as the gathered crown divides to form a stream of granite floor. Hushed whispers continue to ring down her ears but one look ahead and her surroundings are drowned out. All numbness ebbs away and a slightly wavering smile lights up her hardened features. He looks much the same as when they’d been forced to depart yet his youthful complexion is lost. Having grown a moustache, his beard is carefully trimmed as russet curls fall to his ears. Faint, red scars loiter his flesh but his eyes are all warmth as dark lashes cover them. Lean rather than burly, the affect of war is clear as he wears a crisscross of grief and relief. Garmented in leather breeches and a doublet of their House colours, a simple longsword hangs at his side. But not his sword. Darkheart is a formidable thing, as black as onyx and as light as a feather. The edge is one that glistens with a life of its own and the sheath is engraved with the face of a raven, strong bronze holding it together. The famed weapon holds legends of its own, shrouded in prestige and mysteries of centuries past. Some say it’d been unleashed from a rock as old as time, others say it’s forged with the magic that runs through Verona. 

An aura of melancholy clings to him, stress lines on his face etched with sorrow. Days past, he’d jest of Rhaegar’s morbidity with lazy grins and nonchalance. Tarik’s fingers tremble slightly, and he longer looks as bashful as he’d been. Now, he looks the type to indulge himself in solitude and silence as Stefan had been famed for. The joviality he’d been brimming with is scarce and a lingering resistance stands between the siblings who’ve lost all their is to lose. 

Perhaps it’s crippling denial that encases Elena, having already come to terms with such a loss. When the seal had been brokered, of the loss at the Trident and the unknown whereabouts she’d clung on to the hope that he’d be somewhere, hollow soul not reduced to ashes on a barren land. That hope had dwindled, daybreak morphing into nightfall with not so much as a whisper in the wind. Dark wings and dark words Elena had awaited, the face of her House to carry the dreaded sayings. Old Selmy had had the nerve to stride towards her, some days back, with sorries on his lips and sorrow in his eyes. Men such as he shall have songs in their honour, he’d said, he’d fought courageously. Courage or cowardice he was my brother, she’d said, and men such as he are unable to hear your songs. Elena expects the image of him to dissipate on the floor, for the tragic bloodline to become truly tragic. 

And then he strides forward with agile steps, time blurring as he as he embraces his sister with strong yet delicate arms. In his arms there’s no wind, no rain, no pain. All agony dissipates like rain on a summer’s day. The world around her melts away as she squeezes him back, not wanting the moment to end. It feels as if all her pain cascades through his fingers, mental and physical, mostly the depressing pain. If she could only stay in his arms forever, safe from the world's harmful people. One could only hope. Elena has been hugged before, but never like this since her Maks had passed. There’s something so warm, something that makes her want to sing. She lets her body sag, her muscles loosening. Tarik gives her the respect of an equal but cradles her like a cherished child. In that embrace she feels her worries loose their keen sting and her optimism raise its head from the dirt. Perhaps the hope had been there all along, but without some belief it was trapped, like crystals in a stone. 

Like everything in this world, the moment is fleeting and it ends. 

“You died,” she says painstakingly raw, hands covering her lips as a choked sob threatens to escape her throat. 

“I’d searched for father,” he replies numbly. And he sways his head to the side, confirming her horror. A lost cause, a cold case, Cassian Varens is no more but none know what had befallen upon him. Scarce of a body his memory is sewn into the air and his is a story told to children at night. A King who’s loved and lost. 

Only then does Elena notice the figure behind him, curls cascading down her back as she wears a hybrid of radiance and grief. Amethyst eyes stare back at Elena with as much intensity, a soft smile on the face of Amara Dayne. Her features morph into that of Ashara’s, both so alike yet so different. Ashara’s tresses had tumbled like waves of onyx, violet eyes illuminating all who’d seen her. Amara has much the safe affect, but hers are now glossed over. A sister victim to the seas and a brother fallen to the imperious sword of Ned. No matter Elena’s feelings towards the morning sword she envelops Amara with the love she’d bared to Alyssa. 

A marital bliss lies between them and the lingering resistance ebbs away as she feels true happiness flood through her. Some deep, broken part of Elena resents that she’d been unable to attend the ceremony but she prays it’ll fade to a void of nothingness. 

Before anyone can say anything further Tarik looks beyond Elena and fixates his eyes upon Jaime who’s myth has spread to even the dunes of Dorne. The knight’s features are soft, as if he fears scorn and condemnation but Tarik embraces him like a brother, true joy seeping into him. A song of molten gold and delicate bronze, fragile porcelain and soft ivory. Affinity clings itself to Elena who’ll never let it cascade through her fingers again. 

Secluding themselves in their own solitude, the four all but weep in togetherness. For Alyssa who’d gone where no babe should follow, for Stefan who’d designed his own paradise, for their father who’d sprouted seeds of wisdom that can’t be unplanted, for Elia who’ll forever be Dorne’s Princess, for Rhaenys who’d loved Balerion as her own heart, for Aegon the rightful king, for Rosa who’d been the picture of Dorne, for Ashara who’d been more star than woman. And for Arthur, who’s memory grieves them all. Summer children with winter in their hearts and spring in their smiles, the embodiment of the oceans with stars in their eyes and skin kissed by the dizzying rays. Winter women with summer in their hearts and autumn in their smiles, the embodiment of storms with galaxies in their eyes. Grief makes a home within them all, stars shrivelling and the sun fading. But all is not lost. 

“Mother, she knows?” Elena asks timidly, still terrified that her brother will fade into nothingness. 

“I’d sent a raven once I’d arrived at Starfall,” he begins softly as if he’ll break her with a single word, “I couldn’t trust the dark wings to fall into the right hands in this dreadful city,” he finishes. Every ounce of disdain he can muster is etched on his battle hardened features and Elena almost laughs in spite of it all, thankful that Tarik isn’t completely devoid of laughter. 

“You are to be King,” Elena then says with sorrow colouring her tone for the king who could never be. It’s tangible, that sense of loss, for Stefan had been every inch the monarch Verona now needs. He’d been unyielding in his beliefs yet so warm, so wise and yet so childlike. Mocked relentlessly as a child and yet he’d taken it all with stride, indulging in solitude but he had never been sombre. So vibrant, like the sun. And so mysterious, like the moon. A hybrid of feeling and intellect, a boy who’ll be sorely missed. The most like their father, though he’d never tried to emulate the famed Cassian Varens as they’d all attempted to. Stefan Varens, forever the Prince of Verona. 

“The crown is yours to take should you desire it,” he says as if he wants her to proclaim herself queen of a land as ancient as time. Elena shakes her head, insisting that he’d emulate their father in a way she’d never be able to. Politics is her game and yet goodness is his. Their realm is broken and only a man revered can uphold a dynasty on the brink of destruction. 

Tarik looks to her and Amara in earnest before turning to Jaime curiously. “How did it feel to kill him?” he asks, devoid of the crippling judgement the knight now knows like an old friend. A sense of familiarity, perhaps just tenderness, drapes his words and something about it spooks Elena. Yet she understands that he’d spent a lifetime on the confines of a never dying battlefield that must have twisted him somehow, the way it has done to Ned and even Jaime. They look to each other in reverence, something akin to brotherhood being formed before her very eyes. Or perhaps it’d been forged long before. 

The weariness on Jaime’s face slowly evaporates as a becoming grin takes hold of his lips. “Good.” It rolls off his tongue like sweet wine, a certain arrogance held to it which Tarik seems to understand as he reciprocates with a smile of his own. To many, Aerys Targaryen had been naught but a fiend whose words will forever send a chill down their spines. Forever had been carved on their flesh, eternities spent within the confines of this damned castle as they’d all wilted under the scrutiny. Innocence had been running thin, and now the remnants are scarce as they each now thrive in matters of death, bar Amara who looks gaunt at the mention of such tidings. 

“I was nearly a kingsguard,” Tarik replies wistfully, eyes distant. 

“A Prince of another realm a guard to another king?” Amara asks incredulously. 

“Relations between my father and Aerys had worsened,” he says with mild disdain, “I was nearly offered as a means of peace.” 

“Aerys had attempted to broker a betrothal between Rhaegar and Alyssa,” Elena then adds, forever thankful that Alyssa had been spared. She’d never wanted a brittle crown, only a purpose however damning. It saddens her. “Father had refused.” The fury lines etched on his face when the seal had been broken is a memory that Elena recalls fondly. Where Elia had held her head high after Harrenhal, Alyssa would have bled Rhaegar dry. 

“He’s always been mad, prophecy crazed. Ragnar had only wanted a brother.” Tarik’s voice quivers, as if recalling harrowing memories. He’d known Rhaegar the best, forced into the Capitol for matter pertaining business of medicinal and autonomic knowledge. 

“And they say he would have been a great king,” Jaime scoffs. 

“A strength to heal is useless in the hand of a severed head,” Elena then says distastefully, unwelcome memories flooding through her mind. 

The day is spent just like that, talking, of the promises of forever that had almost subjugated them to countless other atrocities. But promises of a different sort enter Elena’s head as she looks to Tarik and Amara whose affection tangible from wear she stands. Looking to Jaime in earnest, she longs to go back to what they once were. Full of dreams and heart and feelings of prosperity and affinity and hope. Hope for what could have been and what’s now lost. 

✧───✧───✧

“I’ll drown the mines of the westerlands in Tywin Lannister’s blood,” Tarik seethes, perpetual rage feeling his being as he faces his sister. Having been royally forgiven for his sins Tarik has spent his time hunting in memory of his dearly beloved father. Dark haired and handsome, he paces as the fur of a shadowcat — which had nearly mauled Amara — is draped around his shoulders. 

“With what men?” Elena asks wryly. 

“The Venetian are loyal,” he snaps but apologises as Elena winces. 

“The Venetian are healing, Rik.” Voice gentle, her heart silently aches. Verona a ruination, Tywin Lannister had seen fit to indirectly threaten their homeland should Tarik reject the marriage proposal of Elena and his dwarf son, Tyrion. The boy has mud for flesh and a heart of glass as she does, and while condemnation could never flow through her veins due to the mere existence of an innocent child, the thought of marrying such a thing repulses her much to her shame. But she’ll endure for the sake of their motherland. 

“I should’ve killed that bastard the moment I came back,” he seethes, tears threatening to form. “For what he did to Elia,” he runs his hands through his hair and clutches at the strands with ferocity, “and you.” He musters up every ounce of self hatred he can find to lace it into one syllable and it makes her heart wrench. 

“Nefarious heads always regenerate,” she says with a hybrid of knowingness and tenderness. Men like Tywin Lannister are thought special because they know not of mercy but they aren’t a rare breed. What separates them is status, men who grasp that power in the palm of their hands and men who don’t. They’re a simple breed, yet their thoughts are intricate for Tywin Lannister cares for naught but the legacy of his House whose name bathes in the blood of the innocent and dances with demons of the past. He’s shed his mud for flesh and broken his heart of glass, fortifying it into stone. No longer is he of stardust and constellations and implosions of nebulas because all that runs through his veins is the promise of immortality. A man revered and a man disliked, his name will be known forevermore and that may be immortal enough for such a man. 

“I can’t let you marry a child, a half one at that.” His features contort into hopelessness as Tarik thrashes his fists against the door, knuckles perpetually bruised in myriads of red and purple that will eventually form scars of his own doing. 

“You cannot prioritise me ahead of a realm, Rik.” The sentiment is much appreciated but Tarik will ensure the destruction of Verona should he base his doings on sentiment alone. Crowns are heavy and the one he wears is more weighty than most. He can’t afford for it to break with a single touch, the bronze must be strong and he must be unyielding. 

“You are my sister,” he says incredulously as if her words hold no truth. “My duty is to you first and my country second,” he says with finality as if it’s ever that simple. All the skies of Verona have fallen and the sun has shrivelled, the moon no longer bares its light and the oceans no longer shows their reflection. Verona is on the verge of an implosion as the fleet is all but destroyed, entire Houses almost extinct such as the Vikarys. The final straw for Elena’s sobs had been the news of Edwin Vikary’s death, all the loss she’s faced mounting together to form a mountain with a peak as icy as the braziers melting off her homeland.

“And your child?” she asks with an edge of Valyrian steel. Her features are etched in a sort of joy while Tarik snaps his head to face her, lips in a straight line and eyes hardened. They rarely soften, Elena’s realised, as if he expects it all to dissipate before his very eyes. The Gods have decided to curse her that is that, the unborn babe deserves two loving parents in a time of further brewing strife.

“Elena,” he begins. He now dons a velvet doublet of black to match the leather breeches he garments himself in, the plainly longsword still by his side as Darkheart stands in the heart of Malgrave Keep. 

“I know Amara’s pregnant.” She dares him to tell her otherwise and to her relief he doesn’t. 

Tarik nods, features etched in melancholy and morbidity and everything sad. Meanwhile Elena’s smile only widens atop her lips, gazing blooming from bloom to bloom as a true glint of joy reaches her eyes. The baby is born to seek love, to be in that beautiful protective web of emotions that give, nurture and guard one another. They invite us to be the best versions of ourselves, to rewind, to cast away the cynicism that poisons and instead make the loving web their intuition searches for. Elena sees their hearts as a compass, the needle spinning until it finds real love, their true north and ours. 

“Do you have any preferred names?” she asks with wide eyes, eager to know more about her unborn niece or nephew. 

“Arthur, if a boy. Alessia, if a girl,” he says with traces of warmth back into his voice. Named for Arthur Dayne or Alyssa Varens, fitting for the child of a King. 

“I’d name a son for Stefan,” she says wistfully. 

“He’d always been your favourite,” Tarik replies with a small smile. 

“I love you all equally,” she murmurs with creased brows as if she’s a lesser woman for having a favourite sibling. Stefan had been hers, she knows she can’t deny. 

“He loved you the most.” His eyes are distant, thoughtful, voice longing and for a moment it lingers. 

“I will marry Tyrion whenever Tywin seems fit, and you will come to my wedding with false smiles even if I don’t wear one.” He nods weakly, she smiles. 

The passageways are flecked with an emptiness as a feast is held in his grace the King’s honour. All invited, sworn swords and servants alike, freeriders and bannermen as streams of gold hang off of every crevice within sight such as the tapestries and windows and chandeliers that are adorned with diamonds galore. The gold glistens like a flickering fire, almost like the sun as it ignites warm hues to Elena’s surroundings of bloody red. No longer do the skulls of dragons stand amongst the halls, all remembrance of the Targaryens ashes in the mouths of their successors as their shrouds are myriads of black and gold. Meanwhile a daunting silence pierces through the halls as Elena glides aimlessly to a window of stained glass. An ornate design of knights and princes who’d fought valiantly for their king, flecked with specs of crimson and green and lavender. Had a hero’s curse befallen all the damned? Or do the poets simply prefer to sing of the victors? But Elena is no poet, only a woman. 

The story is one as old as time and the song sings to Elena most of all. Westeros is blinded by beauty more than skin deep. All to be seen is the blood that lies dormant in your veins and the hues that mark your gowns and doublets. Nobility, they’re called and yet noble intentions are scarce in the game of thrones where fights are fought with words. Words that pray for life and words that pray for power, for vengeance and virtue that cannot be bought with a brittle crown that wilts to ashes on a barren land. Your crimes matter not for your sins are deemed forgivable, no matter those who are reduced to ghosts made flesh and mothers who grieve sons, lovers mourning almost lovers. Guilty is engraved upon the heads of the cursed who soon dance with ghosts of old and bathe in the blood that has flowed from their limp bodies. Death and awful Gods, as is the circle of life. 

Dreams are but plumes of incandescence amongst the tenebrosity, plumes that ignite a passion within the bones of the brittle and the hearts of the hearty. In the reverie that enthrals Elena, the stars and the sky are as black as death’s smiling face, and the raindrops are made of blood, red and thick and wet on her face as she falls to the sodden earth as pieces of her own heart fall before her, bodies limp and lifeless. They cling to armour like a layer of treacle, and they smell of metal and taste of them too. The raindrops were a figment of her imagination, Elena knows, and yet they’d seemed so real. 

Feeling is fleeting as numbness encases Elena who’s unable to drown her sorrows in a wrack of tears that could well drown her. And that sounds peaceful in comparison to the lives she’s already lived. She doesn’t know what to feel regarding her betrothal to Tyrion Lannister, she doesn’t know who to direct her resentment towards. Perhaps herself, because she should have mustered up the courage her father had prided himself on. She should have been righteous in wrath in ways only a Princess could be. Instead the harrowing realisation had crept up on her slowly, terror in its most animalistic form engulfing her with open arms as she had become paralysed in that moment. The aftermath is one she remembers little, only the blood that had coated her gown of white and the marks that still blotch her neck. Elena has never been one for unneeded humility, indulging in her own glamour of beauty and pride yet everything beautiful has shedded. Elena is naught but a ghost story, the remains of a girl whose laughter could make the whole world smile. 

She’d once been the girl to give a soul to those who have lived without one, able to create a sense of beauty in those whose lives had been sordid and ugly, to strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that hadn’t been their own, she’d been worthy of all that adoration. Of Jaime Lannister and the world who’d bowed its feet to Elena Varens, Princess of Verona. And what she and Jaime could have been, had fate not played its part. She’d wanted to make Good Queen Alysanne jealous. She’d wanted the dead lovers of the world to hear their laughter and grow sad. She’d wanted the essence of their passion to to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. She’ll never come to life again. She’s played her last part. But she must think of that lonely death in the morbid chambers as a strange lurid fragment from some harrowing tragedy, a piece of history long gone. That girl never really lived, and so she can never really die. To mane she had been a dream, a phantom gliding through life leaving the sad men lovelier with her presence. The moment she’d touched life it’d marred her. And yet one should mourn for that innocence, if they’d like. They should place ashes atop their head because reverie was taken from her. Cry out against the heavens because the daughter of King Cassian Varens had died. But Elena Varens still lives, an invisible entity in her own body. 

A girl, melded from the fallacies of songs and carved from the secrets that are crisscrosses of betrayals and shadows that linger in the darkness. And she has been born into the bleakness like a raven from the void. A boy, melded from the insolence of youth and carved from broken oaths that are crisscrosses of ghosts and treachery and blood that lingers on his fingers. And he has been born into the bleakness like a phoenix from the void. A boy and a girl, who’d whisper to the stars every night, faded memories and broken words laced together to form angel kissed melodies of the simplest touch that can never be touched again. 

“No song so sweet as the one of the dead.” His arrival is unexpected but not unwelcome. A finger grazes the window, voice devoid of the sarcasm Elena’s accustomed herself to. The poets sing of the damned and the fallen and the dead and the victors as if their words reach the realm of worthless gods, as if they’re gods themselves. And what song is sweeter? she wonders, for the bards love nothing more than a tale of the dead. Perhaps a song of dead lovers, she muses grimly. Notorious lovers whose ashes meld together even in the world beyond. 

“A song so sweet that falls upon deaf ears,” she replies, tone coloured in morbidity, eyes piercing into the stained glass that dances with the flecks of gold. 

“It is a pity the dead don’t hear them.” He gazes to her in earnest, what had meant to be a jest coming out as a sad truth. 

“The dead are naught but ashes amongst plumes of tenebrosity, souls withering under a dying sunlight,” Elena says wistfully. Their souls meld into the earth that shrouds them and falls into the air they’d breathed and they become everything and nothing, simultaneously. It’s a paradox that never stops, always regenerating. “Old Gods or new,” that is a song Elena knows too well, one she’d been torn between, “faithful or faithless, the dead know peace and the living do not.” Living. Those with mud for flesh and hearts of glass and minds of monsters. Fallen soldiers like she and Jaime. Men like Tywin Lannister don’t live, they just are. Heartless and cruel and everything bad in this godforsaken world. “Incandescence shall shine upon them, while we fade into obscurity.” Elena smiles wryly. “The Kingslayer and the Soiled Princess,” she turns her head to face him, “a song for the stars.” Her words are hypnotic, Jaime enthralled in her little tale. 

Like glass, his little reverie breaks and reality reveals itself once more. “My honour has unravelled like silk thread and perhaps virtue prevailed but for better or worse I broke my vows.” His words aren’t as bitter Elena would expect them to be, nor does he sound regretful but a hint of loss colours his tone. As well melancholy. Everything sad in this world. Perhaps that’s the sadder story. “In another life it’d have been my finest act,” it is his finest act, “but everyday I thank the Gods who know naught but death and damnation that you live.” Death and damnation, a crisscross of lies and betrayals. The sincerity of his eyes are startling, features etched in sorrow. It seems as though they are nothing more than sad stories, petals wilting. 

“A deed unsung is no less valiant.” That girl reawakens, Elena’s words almost whimsical as she looks at Jaime in earnest. Once upon a time, he’d been her golden knight. 

“And yet you resent me for such a deed,” he says quietly, brows creased. The hopelessness that drapes his tone causes her heart to wrench. 

“It is a natural virtue incident to one’s sex to be pitiful of those that are afflicted.” Afflicted. Is that what Rhaenys, Aegon and Rosa are reduced to? Afflicted. Brittle bones broken beneath them and mud for flesh cascading though her own fingers. Pitiful. It would be an injustice to think all she feels is pity. Sorrow and heartache and misery and agony and numbness and grief. Torrents of grief that find a home within the Princess of Varens. Mountains of heartache that are the foundations of her breaths. Rivers of agony that flood into her bloodstreams. Oceans of sorrow that Elena has since been carved from, like glass, but weaker. All of her skies have fallen, and she no will: to survive, to live, to love, to breathe, to think, to feel, to be. Her words are a thinly veiled lie and she knows Jaime too well to think he’d not noticed. 

“Perhaps were it not for your wish to be the afflicted.” Frustration laces his tone, not that she can blame him. “For every ounce of happiness you feel to shatter like glass before your feet, shards embedding themselves into your flesh. So that you bleed and you burn,” does he not realise that’s all girl like her are made for? He’s destined for greatness, while history will forget about her. 

“You are the Prince of Casterly, and yours is a song of suns and sins.” That aren’t your own, she wills him to understand. Jaime is luminescence made flesh, the very essence of molten gold. He emits warmth and inspires radiance amongst the drab blues and pale blacks that have since coloured her story. A story that she’s unable to rewrite. He’s a prince whose sun hasn’t yet shrivelled, whose skies haven’t yet fallen, whose stars haven’t yet withered, whose sins haven’t painted him red. A blend of molten gold and strong bronze. Elena is a princess whose sun has shrivelled, who’s skies have fallen, who’s stars have withered, whose sins have painted her the deepest shade of crimson. Delicate porcelain she may have been but now she’s brittle bones. Her pretty features are etched in crestfallen colours that only bloom. Hers shall be a shroud of gold and red. 

“You are the Princess of Verona and yours is a song of courage and constellations,” he replies with equal determination, words draped with light. Again, he’s wholly beautiful in this moment. The innocence of childhood has long since shed as a true knightly valour clings to him as death does to her. His eyes are still summer personified, smile still spring personified. Like her, his heart is one of the harshest winters that freezes his blood. Jaime’s features are etched divine like. 

“You recall the Tully words?” she asks with a sudden light. 

“Family, duty, honour.” Hard, unrelenting. 

“Aye.” Northern accent accentuated, he smiles. “Notice that there is an order to those, duty before honor, and family before duty. But I will have four boons.” Four means of justice. “Four vengeances, for the sake of family, duty and honour. I’ll do as he bids but I’ll have revenge, one day. Gregor Clegane, for Aegon and Rosa. Amory Lorch, for Rhaenys. And your father, for Elia.” Their names roll off her tongue like Dornish red and bile rises up her throat. “Nefarious heads always regenerate but anger makes dull men witty and it keeps them dead.” Be it a moon or ten years. “For in House Varens, all is not lost.” Kings of winter who’d prevailed against dragonfire, the words are engraved onto her bones. “Winter is coming, ser, snow shall fall in the West because a Lannister always pays his debts.” It’s romantic, the bards will sing, how she thinks him better than his name. It isn’t a song, it’s the truth that noble (wicked) men shield themselves from. 

“And may those debts be paid.” He doesn’t hesitate. “Whose bidding shall you abide by?” She smiles humourlessly. 

“Lord Tywin, of course.” 

“And what bidding is that?” he asks, suddenly petrified. 

“Your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, he’d said to Rik, should I refuse to wed your brother.” And the revelation is revealed, her voice lacking all sense of feeling. There’s an unknowingness that clings to her, but it isn’t an unknowingness or anything alluring. It’s a truth she knows deep within her heart but can’t bare to face atop the tides that that threaten to drown her. Like the tides, this will never stop. It’ll consume her fully, and the weight of it will carve a void within her chest and reduce her to sheer nothingness. 

“Tyrion,” he says numbly. 

“A halfman and the soiled princess, the Gods are fickle indeed.” Fire gods and water gods, the old and the new, they’re all callous creatures who immortalise those who shouldn’t be immortalised. They make gods of men whose blood is used to write the histories of time. Monsters, not survivors. 

“I don’t understand.” 

“The debt will be paid, he’d said.” A Lannister always pays his debts. 

Realisation strikes him and he turns pale. “You or Verona.” 

Elena offers her knightly love another wry smile, traces of humour lacing it but her eyes are morbid and she reeks of death. “I should be thankful,” she dwindles her fingers in her and the action offers her a sense of comfort, “I suppose, for who could ever love someone as wretched and divine as me?” It had meant to come out as half a jest and yet bitterness draped her words, always reaching higher peaks. A choked sob had almost escaped her throat, and tears threaten to fall to her cheeks. Her weakness is astounding, and she’s a lesser woman for it. “I should be lucky to marry a Lord of Lannister who is half my age and height.” The lesser Lannister Lord. Hers shall be a shroud of red and gold. 

Jaime’s features are etched in a hybrid of denial and rage. Rage towards her? she wonders for she has insulted his beloved brother. The rage would be deserved, and yet his eyes soften as her brows crease, the golden knight placing a tentative touch to the curve of her jawline. Fleeting, as they’ve accustomed themselves to. “Tyrion may never stand taller than the flatterers and fools of court on his own two feet,” he begins and Elena finds herself enthralled with his words, slight wonder alighting her eyes with the first touch of warmth in days, “but he’s taller when standing on their backs.” Is your father a flatterer or a fool? 

“You should have let me die.” Quiet, hollow, broken. 

“And how could I?” Hard, aching, unrelenting. 

“Did you ever think of how I’d be affected?” Now, Elena is unable to stop the choked sob that escapes her throat as her lips quiver with gods’ tears. “He took my honour and my innocence and my joy.” Tears fall from her eyelids, like crystals that burn her flesh with the fire of a thousand cruel deities who’ve never cared for her. “Death would have been a mercy, Jaime,” the earnestness of her gaze is one so aching that Jaime may well collapse from his failures as a twisting feeling takes ahold of his stomach that burns like fire incarnate. His name on her lips softens the wrenching of her words, so tender and raw, “a reprieve. And it hurts, so much.” Her nails dig into her hands and the blood that’s drawn soothes her beyond belief. Jaime doesn’t notice. “Instead I have to face my ghosts everyday,” her features contort into sheer disgust as if he’s the ghost and perhaps he is, “everyone I see, their faces morph into his.” He who has damned her. “He lives, while I wilt. How is that fair?” She almost drops to her knees but the ocean of rage doesn’t allow her to. 

“Where fairness is mixed with justice, that is too good an accord for the Gods.” Solemn and sombre, everything Jaime Lannister isn’t meant to be. 

“Fuck the Gods.” 

“Aye, fuck the Gods.” As they curse the Gods who’ve cursed them, a hoard of noble (wicked) men and women alike walk past with apparent disdain towards their vulgar words. “There’s daggers in men’s smiles,” he says grimly, glaring daggers at those who stare back with their frilly frocks and stupid grins. 

“Could you ever love me?” she asks suddenly, eyes not devoid of the tears that had encased her. “As the Ironborn say, what is dead may never die.” And she smiles crudely again. 

“I love you, I have loved you, I will always love you who taught me how to love.” His voice is surprisingly even and his words pierce into Elena like the scorching rays of sunbeams. The beams that hold the heavens. He takes her hand within his, no longer fleeting as he intertwines their fingers and the softness of his skin has always endeared her. Yet there are now some callouses. 

“False face must hide what false heart does know.” Jaime almost smirks, she feels. 

“I could write it upon the walls, if it pleases you my Princess.” The joviality of his tone fills her with warmth. But once her name is tethered to that of his brother’s she can no longer be his. 

“I fear your father would skin you alive,” she says dryly. 

“What a legacy that would be.” He grimaces, mustering up every ounce of disdain he feels for his lordly father. A disdain she feels deep within her bones. 

“One man’s victory is another’s defeat,” she replies evenly. 

Jaime looks thoughtful, the light released through the window resonating with his chiselled features. His hair softly sways with the wind and his lips are red, red, red. Garmented leather breeches and a white tunic, he’s dressed humbly yet he’s never looked so regal. Like a god made flesh. “Or mayhaps all our fates are just cut from one string, and each string has its branching paths, a thousand different futures and possibilities.” Elena’s brows crease once more, urging him to continue. “When I’d worn that dreaded cloak I’d think,” his voice takes in a new light of nostalgia, “in another life it’d have been you.” Every ounce of reverence and love is mustered up and Elena almost swoons as she once would have. “Perhaps this is that other life.” A hand brushes strands of ebony locks behind her eyes, his touch lingering evermore. 

“You’re a poet.” Her eyes sparkle. 

Theatrically, Jaime falls to his knees and locks eyes with Elena and the passion within them is startling. Her breathing steadies as noble (wicked) men and women swarm towards them, Cersei Lannister in the centre of it all as her hardened features are etched in blazing fury and Elena would laugh were it not for Jaime on his knees. “Elena Varens, will you marry me?” He sings a song, voice hypnotic as even the gods peer in. A song of summer and winter, ice and fire, the sun and the stars. A song that even the gods couldn’t sing. A song sealed with a kiss as virtuous as the gods they’d worshipped. Fierce, violent even. Teeth and tongue and lips and hunger. A burning hunger and desire that consumes them in whole as the noble (wicked) men scoff at the impropriety. Unquenched yearning and ardent longing for all they’d once wanted. And thus their story begins. 

That night, the promise of forever invades her thoughts as she twists and turns with the feeling of Jaime’s touch lingering on her flesh. A promise sealed long before with unchaste kisses and glances and smiles and heartache. As honour and duty unravelled, a vow had been forsaken as his virtue prevailed and now their names will be intertwined forevermore with a new vow. Of love and homage and fidelity and prosperity. 

Jaime Lannister and Elena Varens, Prince of the sun and Princess of the stars. 

Streams of sunlight weave into the decorated chambers as Jaime twists in the feathered bed. The words of vows long broken invade his thoughts, the feeling of Elena’s touch lingering on his flesh. Vows which had seen him carve a persona of stone as he’d been slowly drowning under the weight of it all. Vows which had seen Jaime denounce all he’d prided himself on; courage, virtue, nobility, bravery, chivalry. As duty had unravelled, that vow had been forsaken and Elena’s name will be painted in Lannister colours forevermore. A promise fastened long ago with improper kisses and fleeting touches that shall no longer be fleeting. The vows of the past had seen honour bow before him and now dishonour seeps itself into him. They’d once given him strength and prestige and pride. This promise will perhaps see disgraced dance before him but Jaime will be bestowed with prosperity and love. 

The breeze of the wind rouses him from a fitful slumber, eyes fluttering open against the summer air that feels like a winter chill. Jaime awakens to the chirping of birds ringing down his ears and the chatter of noble (wicked) men and women beneath the Keep. Idle gossip, of his rendezvous with Elena. If it were a story, it’d be one of tragedy titled The Song Must Be Sung for what choice had she had? It’d been the Kingslayer or the Imp and so Elena Varens is forced to dance to the melody of the Lannisters. 

She deserves better. 

One heart, one soul, one flesh. Now and forever. Till death do them part. Weddings signify new chapters. Marriage is a place where the savage winds cease, where no clouds can block the warmth of the evening rays. It is a place where the sun may set with not fear of the darkness to come. Where one soul can whisper to another in a language only it's mate can truly hear. Why must their matrimony begin with death? Death is a shadow that lurks in the dark, he crawls under little children's beds and he is always there. He’s always there, following you and the closer he gets the sooner he will take you as his own. He is the ghost that people fear and he is the tormentor of the many corpses claimed by death. One day this cruel god will embrace him who has no songs sang for him. Him who inspires dread and disgrace. Why must the tethering of two already intertwined souls begin with such a tragedy? The boy in him reawakens and he longs for nothing more than a happy ending. The fairytale he’d believed in. With Elena. 

Because he knows Elena. 

Jaime knows that Elena would steal all the raspberry tarts from the kitchens in Verona and pile them atop each other to form a tower she and Stefan — Jaime misses him and he’d never known him — would indulge themselves in because raspberries have the right balance of sourness and sweetness unlike blueberries and strawberries. They’re a deep shade of crimson that resonates to her soul unlike the scarlet shade of red apples she loathes. 

Jaime knows that Elena indulges herself in the histories of man that shroud her like an unraveling tapestry. Her favourite stories are of Darkheart and Dawn, devoid of romance and love songs but tales of battles lost and won, tales of creation. Of water witches who’d gained their power from the river Rhoyne and greenseers who draw their magic from the trees of the old. Tales of magic and stardust that are shrouded in mystery and weave themselves into her blood. Meanwhile his had been of Aemon the Dragonknight and Barristan the Bold and Arthur Dayne and Ser Duncan the Tall. He’d dreamt of dust and she of stars. 

Jaime knows that Elena isn’t the dreamer people think her to be. She may be carved out of stardust and gods’ tears and pieces of distant heavens and her head may be in the clouds but her feet are on the ground. Elena isn’t of empty air and sound mind for who is? A fair maiden she may be but her heart is one of a warrior’s. Her world is one of fallen skies that don their winter coats while snow crunches underfoot, not of blue skies that dance to the serenade of birds and princes who bequeath a crown on their princess fair. Her world is of greens and purples and blues and yellows and reds while his had been of rose coloured vision. He’d sang of true knights who save the maiden fair and inspire valour upon the common people who are at war against ancient evils of starvation and poverty. She sings to the stars and he’d sang to the sun. 

You won’t be a false knight forever, she had said. 

What am I now?

Rising from his haven of comfort and warmth, furs of Lannister red covering his bareness, he thinks of her. Joanna Lannister. Her face oft fades into obscurity but he can remember the gentility of her touch, her smile often contorting into Cersei’s. But his mother wouldn’t do scornful. He attributes Elia’s warmth and Elena’s wit to the woman who named him. It softens his memory of her, Tyrion’s intelligence playing a large part in what little he recalls. 

The laces of Jaime’s breeches are tied up and his chest is bare as Cersei saunters into his chambers with venom etched on her features that resemble his own so unnervingly. His twin is dressed in a gown of blood red that matches the heat of her cheeks and she smells of sickeningly sweet oils. Once, he’d found it endearing but he’s now familiarised himself to the scent of oak leaves and seawater that Elena carries like a weightless crown. 

“You’ve always been soft but to marry her?” she spits out, each word draped in the cruelty of a thousand cruel gods. “All because father had forced her to marry our brother.” Jaime finds it amusing how Cersei denies his obvious affection for Elena, the stories have only gathered momentum and they’ve spread to every crevice of the Keep. She’s just as bad as father. “You truly are weak.” Like a snake unleashing venom. But not a Dornish viper like Elia who’d always been composed and regal. 

“I want to marry her,” Jaime says cooly because he does. 

Cersei looks incredulous, haughtily staring down at him. “A soiled Princess to disgrace our name?” But his sweet sister will soon be a Baratheon and hers shall be a shroud of black and gold whereas Elena’s will be of gold and red. Blood and death, awful gods, fating two women to undeserved fates. Innocent women. His twin may be scornful and proud and vicious but she isn’t bad. He doesn’t think so, anyway. “I should have been the man.” Jaime mouths the words along with her, the sweet bitterness engraved into his bones. 

“WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?” he screams and Cersei flinches. Elena was here when you weren’t, she’d been my guiding light in a time of deepening darkness. She’d never laughed at me, nor scorned me, nor condemned me. Where were you? The Princess of Casterly had been safe within the confines of the Rock while he had shrivelled under the burning sun. But he hadn’t wilted, because of Elena. His sister’s is a song of sins and scorn, and he wants no part in it. 

“Robert would reinstate you as a kingsguard.” She says stonily, carved out of marble. “Stay here with me.” 

“I can’t, I won’t.” His words are firm and hard and unrelenting and Jaime is proud of himself. For so long he’s allowed himself to be coerced by her whisperings of sweet nothings, just watching as all of his self worth had unravelled before him. As it’d cascaded through his fingers and turned to mud on the floor. He’d never craved mud, but fire. Cersei had twisted his dreams of Sers Aemon and Barristan and Duncan, moulding Jaime to do naught but right by her and only her. She’s twisted everything he’s ever loved and he’ll be damned if he allows her to twist his love for Elena. 

“You can, and you will, if you want me,” she says as if she truly believes her words. She strokes his face, her thumb brushing over his skin. Soft and warm. Jaime’s features harden. He had thought of her too much. Relied on her memory to get him through long and lonely nights. Harrowing nights. Hours spent standing by a madman king while he’d prayed for an end that didn’t come until he’d made it happen with the bravery a boy of seventeen can muster up. He had thought of her laughter and her smiles when they were children. He had thought of her skin, the softness of it under his fingertips. All of his desires had faded as ebony tresses and pools of honey had invaded his dreams. Plump lips of hope and everything sweet in this world. Elena’s a gentle lover, and he craves that intimacy even now. Animalistic lust is no longer attractive. Her fingernails dig into his skin as she turns his face to get him to look at her. Jaime recoils. Her voice is a whisper, but it’s a strangled one, and more piercing than a scream. “I’m glad you let the Dornish cunt die.” 

His insides collapse and the air is taken out of his lungs, his breathing shallows and he wills for the world around to die. How can Cersei not see that this isn’t just grief but the breakdown of the beams that hold the heavens? That he can no longer call himself Jaime Lannister without feeling torrents and torrents of shame and disgust enveloping him? “Elia and her children were innocent,” Jaime says piercingly, like he might scream and cry at the same and gods does he want to. Childlike fear drapes his words and he longs to evaporate on the floor, nameless, where no bloody name can tie itself to him. Just Jaime, Elena’s golden knight. What legacy shall I leave? Cersei still stares at him as if she can’t understand the connection and Jaime’s eyes gloss over in hatred and disgust. “I swore oaths to protect the innocent, and I failed,” he chokes out, and he longs to wilt. 

“You swore a vow to protect Aerys, and you broke that when it was convenient.” She laughs at his expression and then touches his face softly again. But it isn’t soft, it’s spiteful. “Don’t look at me like that. You did right. You handed Robert the crown!” Jaime wants to implode, for his insides to smother Cersei so she can shut up. “He’ll forgive you once we’re wedded since you are the most dangerous swordsman in the kingdom,” she says laughingly and he may well strangle her. “It’ll make the gossiping quieter, all those sheep saying father should have acted sooner, before the war was won. His own son did the deed. Though you should have let the northern bitch die as well.” 

And the thin strand that holds him together snaps, like the brittle bones of little Rhaenys and branches underfoot. She’s never known me, nor truly. He’d damned them four and he deserves blame because it’s his fault. Elia’s bruised and battered body will never leave his memory, the bloody ruins of the babe will forever be the bane of his existence. Why can’t Cersei see that? “Fuck. You,” he says scathingly. It’s hatred in its most animalistic form. The beast within his chest is unleashed and it’s feral as he tightens his fingers around her soft neck, marvelling in the way her skin reddens. And then he releases her. 

Uncle Gerion’s words suddenly invade his thoughts. You are the best of your mother, his favourite uncle had said with a kind smile despite how grave his words had been, and the worst of your father. Your sister is the worst of your mother, he’d said with much less fondness, and the best of your father. Tyrion, he is a mix of both I believe. His words may well haunt Jaime for an eternity. 

“Jaime,” she begins. 

“We aren’t the same,” he says after everlasting silence in which tension had gathered like the largest mountain known to man. 

“We can still have it all.” 

“HOW?” he screams because he’s tired. 

“After the wedding,” she says after a moment, “we’ll share a bed.” The thought repulses Jaime now, wanting nothing more than to escape her presence and her smell and just her. She reeks of everything bad in this world, a stench that even the sickeningly sweet oils are unable to shroud. “I can’t give you my virtue but I’ll give myself to you. Entirely.” He laughs heartily then, amused to no end because Cersei thinks him to be hers still. Whenever he’d ask she’d refuse him because her one true love Rhaegar could be the only one to receive her gift and now she is begging him. The gods are fickle indeed. 

“I’ve lost my virtue,” he says plainly with a smirk laced upon his lips. His features are etched in smugness and contentedness that only grows because he can still remember the lingering resistance that he and Elena had initially been consumed by. He vividly recalls how they’d drank in the sight of each other bare, her hands firmly nestled within his hair and his encircling the buds of her breasts and skimming the slope of her jawline delicately. The way she’d moaned his name, indecently like a prayer. It’d ignited something within him. Passion. Burning desire that spread into his bones and his being. When he’d entered her he’d been whole and now he’s a broken version of himself. He can almost feel the feel of her lips on his and his smile softens. 

Cersei slaps him and it mildly aches. “To that Northern whore?” Sheer disdain colours her tone and Jaime sneers. “Father will be wroth.” She’s cruel and ugly in a way she’s never been before and Jaime curses himself for being so fucking blind. 

He doesn’t hesitate as he says his next words, voice frighteningly still. No longer is he the green boy that Cersei can manipulate to her will. Disgraced he may be but he’s Jaime, no longer a false knight. He likes the sound of Jaime Varens, if he’s to be truthful. “Robert will be wroth when he learns his betrothed had offered herself to her twin.” 

“You wouldn’t.” Jaime would. Better his death than Elena’s. 

“Threaten Elena again.” He’s dangerously close to her, so close that they’re one breath but his words are draped in the venom of a thousand snakes, the ferocity of a thousand lions, the regality of a thousand ravens. “I dare you you miserable bitch.” His nails dig into her flesh, not hard enough to draw blood but his message is received and he smiles victoriously. 

✧───✧───✧

The noble (wicked) men and women of Westeros thrive in matters of life and death, good and evil, death and rebirth. As such, the whispers of the wind have mounted from the mountains of the Vale to the desert lands of Dorne, the word spread to lands of northern chill and summer sunshine. The betrothal between Elena and Jaime is one that inspires a certain folly within children whose heads are in the clouds. The boys of the stars and girls of distant heavens fail to understand that their marriage is a crisscross of death and deception, that their hearts may be upon their sleeves but their feet are on the cold, hard ground. Stardust is no longer smeared atop their lips, nor are they shrouded in constellations that glimmer like diamonds. Hearts beating as one soul, theirs is a love destined for the tragedy bards will sing of. Of happy endings that could have been and betrayals that will forever linger in the book of history. Elena Varens and Jaime Lannister, fated by entities unknown to become one flesh and one tale. 

The aforementioned lovers as well as Tarik and Amara — who glows in her pregnancy, all have noticed — shall depart to Verona to bid farewell to those taken far too soon because the gods have never cared for dead children who gather atop each other to form mountains as colossal as the giants they’re built on. Awaiting them will be Adeline Varens nee Martell who now knows naught but loss that lurks behind her like a shadow, always there and never leaving. Their mother has always been a strong woman and right now she wears a brittle crown of strong bronze and radiant rubies, glistening like the sun of her house. A queen she is but her throne will soon be another’s as Tarik’s coronation awaits. And as the Venetian say, for King and country always. They’ll perish if not persist. 

They travel by ship, as is the way of the Venetian. 

The surface of the water falls and rises like a steady pulse, rhythmically, never overbearing. The wind has become the orchestral conductor of the sea, sending waves into their crescendos' all through the ballad that is the night of terrors. The Princes of suns and stars and Princesses of stars and moons are shrouded by the perfume of the salty water and the fine spray that comes as boldly as any viola flurry. It’s as if life herself had entered the water and the energy is so great that this great pulse comes upward to form a steady rhythm. One would be unable to tell where the grey skies end and the grey seas begin. Grey clouds swirl in a tumult of stormy air above, blue-grey waves swirl below, crashing into the side of the iron-grey ship. Grey faces tinged with green stagger about the decks on bandy legs as the ship rocks in great figures of eight. 

The days go slowly as Elena often gazes to the world beyond, longing to become one with the sea she so loves. At night, she oft imagines the ocean turning to the colour of the anger that rushes through her bones and being, the smashing of glass as the shards draw warm blood from her cracked skin, the dry pain in her eyes after the tears have left her numb, the empowerment and heartbreak of passion and love and the feeling of the never ending warmth of a blazing fire that scorches her skin to ashes while flames dance upon her flesh and in her veins and her head to render her whose memory is sewn into the air as a lost cause. The blood of the ocean drops are hers, waves rippling like it’s meant to be. 

Overlooking the surface beneath her, Elena is garmented in a gown of black silk embroidered with golden ravens and stitched with plain patterns that are unable to be seen when leagues away, a large contrast to the vibrancy of her usual gowns. Her wardrobe is scarce of fully black dresses, and it dampens her mood all the more. Perhaps she’ll stitch her on, but all ability to do anything leaves her. 

Time heals all wounds, the poets say, and yet Elena has never known such fallacies. The wounds deepen as if rubbed on with salt. When once she’d felt sadness creeping into her chest and grief creeping into her bones and anger creeping into her blood she now feels fear make a home within her that neither gold nor golden boy can dissipate because she wakes up to the smell of charred bones and sleeps to the faces of the bodies she’d kissed farewell. She feels hatred wrap itself around her flesh, for herself and those who hold the faces of her nightmares. The hatred is so intense, like it’s searing. Being branded onto her bones and her skin and heart. She feels an incredible aversion to life as she knows it. No longer is Elena able to view the world around her with her own eyes because she feels as if she’s an invisible entity watching everything happen in third person as the black veil that clings itself to her only thickens and threatens to strangle the life out of her. But it’s more than that. Everything sets in. Faintness. disproportionately aggrieved, faintness, nausea, desolateness, fury, absolute despair, engulfing terror, traces of a bereft soul, pity, guilt, spasms of distaste, revulsion, irritation, grief, nostalgia, resentment, shame, bitterness, neurotic, obsessed, callous, rueful, tingling happiness, exuberant, joyous, courage, sensitivity, compassion, love, protectiveness, forgiveness, bravery, soulful, spiritual, mischievous, scatty, wilful, determined, triumphant, victorious, melancholy, misery, anxiety, self-disgust, a sense of unease, franticness, impatience, impulse, contempt, oversensitivity, claustrophobia, infuriating terror, trauma, disturbing horror, disgruntled, disconcerting, suspiciousness, unwillingness, apprehension, judgement, mournful plumes, shaken hazes, revulsion, disillusionment, cold disgust, gripes of pain. Granted, the good things set in rarely but they still come and it’s maddening. 

Tarik stands beside her, dressed in a boiled leather jerkin atop black leather breeches. Much of his youthful complexion is returned, his cheeks no longer as gaunt as they were and the hollowness having abandoned him when it’d once clung to him as she does the seas. Still, he looks wiser. Her brother’s features are etched in earnestness as his brows are furrowed, gazing at the deep beyond as if he recalls much simpler times when death didn’t embrace the pair like a long lost friend. Nostalgia is a fickle thing, and Elena’s learnt that it never really subsides. There’ll always be better times ahead and in the days long gone. 

Meanwhile Jaime and Amara are absorbed in a game of cyvasse, the Dayne woman having taught the Lannister knight who’s yet to win a game. The pieces are of ivory and jade, with the squares of the game board a colour of carnelian. 

“Do you think they’re at peace?” Elena suddenly asks, voice timid as she refuses to meet his gaze. 

“As father always said: Heaven and hell are the same gift, perfect insight into the effect of your life. Had you done more good than bad, been virtuous more often that you were treacherous, then you were bathed in the happiness you gave others. The more profound the goodness the stronger the effect. The worse you had been the weaker the effect, until the balance tips to more pain inflicted than alleviated. Then the effect is hellish. For those unfortunates their eternity is to feel that pain they had inflicted. The worse the deeds the more intense the anguish,” Tarik says with a soft smile. Art of the Heart, a project overseen for years. “They were good, too good.” Life isn’t a song. “The Gods will cherish them,” he finishes, his voice silky against the softness of the breeze. Their father had been a pious man, Alyssa possessing his devotion to the gods which had always been endearing to Elena. The godswood has always possessed a divine intimacy but it’d intensify in their presence as well as Tarik’s whose faith is still unwavering. 

Stefan had had the charisma that gently falls to the ground like snowflakes drifting through the winter air: silent, subtle, fragile to touch but charismatic nonetheless. He’d been borne of winter and thunderstorms and scars and stars yet he’d possessed the gentlest touch of the broken souls. His light had been enrapturing, ethereal, otherworldly, one that had whispered subtly to those who’d dare listen, and his words had been enthralling yet as soft as the canvas of snowfall that shrouds wildflowers in the north. His eyes had been entrancing, taking on a new light of their own because he’d been so unyielding in his beliefs. A godless boy, yet faithful all the more. “And as Stefan said: life isn’t a pit, it’s a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail, and they never get to try it again — the fall breaks them. And some are given another chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm, or the gods, or love, power even. But only the ladder is real, life is all there is. Our minds conjure illusions and dreams to quench the innate yearning we possess, yearning for a world beyond in which the follies of man will no longer matter. A world in which we’ll be within the grasps of the gods who’ll do naught but mould us to their liking and take the best parts of us. We’re each made of stardust and pieces of distant heavens and our souls will one day fall apart into the world we abandon. Only we won’t abandon the lands we take our dying breaths in, we become part of them. The gods aren’t real, but we are.” Her voice takes a melancholic tone, soft, like a song she’ll never forget. Laced with nostalgia and reminiscence. Her words do little to ease the terror she feels. 

Elena can imagine herself standing at the gates of hell, the fire licking at her skin. She’d want the cursed fire to punish her. Death had danced on her flesh as she’d tangled with the devil and yet here she stands, when she shouldn’t be. A time will come when the only god she knows will have its retribution. With gratitude she’ll lift her foot from the cool white tile and place it into the ashes that send up glowing embers into the smoky gloom only to feel the kiss of refreshing water. The inferno will be gone and her foot would be in a placid ocean, the sunset glowing orange ahead. Behind her would be a gentle voice telling her she was forgiven. Her sins were gone. And she’d turned. And the weirwood leaves had a face as stony as the ones she knows, as hard as her brittle bones. In the cool soft light of the heavens Elena would feel a rage build inside her like she'd never known before. She’d want to rip the gods limb from limb, make them hurt like she had, like her loved ones had. They’d been risen from the ashes doing naught as the world bequeathed death and damnation upon her and those she still loves as her own heart. She envies the faith Tarik still holds. 

“I suppose we’ll never know,” he says nonchalantly. 

“We’ll have to find out one day,” she replies morbidly. 

When they eventually arrive to their motherland there’s a permanent black veil that shrouds the mountains and the marches, the seas and the keeps, the wildflowers and the trees. Magic is still radiated from the way the leaves sway with the wind to the way the ocean churns as if under some spell casted by witches of days past. The eerie darkness of that night would never escape Elena’s memory. She will forever remember the pitch-black curtain draped over the sky, and the twisted, warped shapes that the stars should have made against the blackness. The milky speckles that should have twirled and danced along the sky in various patterns, tugging at the corners of her lips in a way that would always make her smile. Age old tales are told there, tales of dragons and heroes, good and evil, of times of war and times of peace, but mostly of life and death. Stretched across a never ending sea of sorrows, millions of scattered glimmers of hope pierced through the veil. How many battles won? How many soldiers lost? All beneath the beauty of the stars who had seen so much in their courses of life. Who knew how much they could endure. But those days are no longer as the tapestry that hangs above them is one that refuses to unravel. 

The Venetian are filled with a void as some keeps are broken down and the ones lost are fathers and brothers, sons and friends. The gods care not for one dead child so why would they care for the crimes of war that have left lands lands bleeding and its inhabitants healing and grieving. Because the game of thrones is tainted by beauty more than skin deep. Judged not for the kindness of your heart but the regality coursing through your veins, God's blessed. They care — not for your sins, your crimes of war leaving mothers mourning sons and lovers mourning almost lovers — the cruelty of one’s actions matter not for you will one day be deemed victorious and sins forgivable while innocents lay dead in your wake. The game of thrones, about deceptive morals and endearing lies. Friend or foe beware the man you think you know. 

In the game of thrones you win or you die. 

Some entities unknown, callous and cruel, have made it so that Elena’s mud for flesh still stands while her heart of glass caves in on itself. That the touch of death had only lingered, fleeting, refusing to embrace her with its lifeless hands. She lives in spite of all the skies that have fallen, and so Elena Varens is a victor in the game of thrones for better or for worse. But she’d take it all back in a heartbeat, no matter the cost, whether it be her whose ashes meld with the seas. For how can one truly live (and win this stupid game) when their memories are shards of glass at their feet? And there the children of the dark have their dwellings, of sleep and death, awful gods. This is an internal haemorrhage, the collapse of her insides and the mud for flesh that holds her together. It’s the flooding of the aching pain that consumes her. 

Their mother stands in the midst of it all with ebony tresses as dark the night and golden eyes as bright the sun that’s shunned its light from them all. Her hair has since grown, falling to her waist in tumbling waves like that of the sea that Maks had loved so. Her skin is devoid of the glow she’d once had, and her eyes are sullen and glossed over with everything bad in this world. Atop her head a crown of strong bronze is nestled, turrets broken out of rage. Adeline Martell Varens dons a Dornish gown embroidered with yellow suns on the blouse while the skirt is of black and blue thread, interlinking to form ravens. Her black veil is just as black as the rest and yet she wears it so effortlessly. 

She greets them all with a warm embrace, clinging herself to Elena particularly tightly as if she’s afraid her daughter’s ashes will cascade through her nimble fingers. And then she says it, so raw, so painstakingly raw because no longer is she a queen but a mother whose lost her children and her joy and a wife whose lost her husband. “I was a queen and they took my crown. A wife, and they killed my husband. A mother, and I’ve been deprived of my children. My blood alone remains, and one day my suffering will cease.” Her voice no matter how raw is unrelenting, hard, of the harshest winters and shortest summers. 

The funerals take place by the oceanside, the attendants ranging from the royal party themselves to the stable boys and nobles of the land. The bodies are put to a pyre, the waves crashing into their beings. 

He looks so young, like the boy she’d abandoned with tears in her eyes. In life Stefan had a ready smile and knowing eyes. In death he is ghostly pale, his lips already bluish. Though his eyes are closed he doesn't have the appearance of sleep, even in deep slumber there are tiny movements and a healthy glow to the skin. This corpse, so still on the earth, is his flesh and seeing it deepens the hollowness within Elena’s chest. Because he’s left them all for a new life, for whatever follows this existence, whether he becomes one with the lands who’d birthed him or returns to the Gods. Yet, even though she knows he’s gone, Elena wants nothing more than to press a kiss to his forehead lightly and stroke back his russet hair. It's part of bidding him farewell and making a wish that one day they’re together again in whatever comes next. She’d would follow him anywhere, protect him any way she could, but she can’t. 

Yet Alyssa looks as if she’s deep in a slumber in which she dreams of the the gods and her girl and all that she’d loved. Her tresses fall around her face to illuminate how ghastly pale her flesh is. Elena can remember that night so vividly, forever ingrained into her head. The way her sister’s skin had frozen, the way her eyes had shut and heart had stopped, the way she’d been filled with the hope of a thousand stupid girls like her. 

Stefan is garmented in a velvet doublet of turquoise and blue atop black leather breeches, having always detested white tunic and jerkins if boiled leather. Alyssa is garmented in a gown of the same colours embroidered with wildflowers and opium poppies as hers is the andal word for flowers. The dress is sleeveless and the edges are woven into with orange thread. 

And then they’re laid to rest as the flames engulf them before the waters. 

Fiery embers dance upon their flesh, blackening their bones and burning their ghastly pale skin. The flames lick at their gown and doublet, a dance of red and yellow and orange. The smell of roasting bodies embeds itself into Elena’s bones as they leave to another life. Of gods or of men, she doesn’t know but Elena will pray nonetheless. 

And then it all burns.


	2. 2

They stay in Verona for three moon-turns. Days are fleeting and the black veil has only thickened like rotting blood. Gone are the days of vibrant sunshine, now naught but vivid daydreams as blankets of rainfall adorn the wildflowers and the roots buried deep underground. The snow is thicker and whiter, not even stained with the blood that coats their fingers as the coldness it radiates embeds itself into Jaime’s lungs, having buried himself within the puffs of white magic for hours on end. Three shades paler and a carefree grin etched on his handsome features, he’d felt at home within the confines of this mystical island whose legend is renowned and myths are dreaded. He’s learnt a great bit while wandering through the halls of the Keep in which portraits of Alara Varens — mistress to Aegon IV the same time as Melissa Blackwood as they’d been equally loved, Queen (not consort) Evelyn Varens — who’d graced the Capitol with her presence as the sprouts of the Dance of Dragons had been rooted and had been an ardent supporter of Alicent Hightower. Some say they’d been entangled in a messy love affair as the good queen had ended her days within the crimson walls of the Red Keep, abandoning the crown in favour of her youngest sister Celine who’d very nearly began her own civil war, only tempered by her son, Mikel, who’d had a reign of prosperity as he’d delved in the dark arts. Jaime finds himself intrigued with the Prince Landon. Like Elissa Farman, he’d travelled west on the Star Chaser never to be seen again. Come centuries later his bones had been returned to the ancestral Keep with mist hanging off it. Some say he’d perished in the seas, his corpse washing up in Essos all those years later. Others say he’d lived to be a warlock in the shadowlands and Jaime likes that one the least for reasons he’s unable to explain. He’s even found himself in the library, enthralled with the Varens’ link to the infamous Doom of Valyria. There are varying reports, of course, but many entail a raven with wings as dark as the perilous night circling the fallen skies. Some say a Varens had warged into the creature, their ancient blood prevailing in times of direst need. During the reign of Daeron the Good he’d attempted to unify Verona as one peoples and place as he’d done with Dornish, only the results had almost been disastrous. While he’d wedded the Princess Daenerys to Maron Martell while wedding Myriah herself, he’d promised his oldest son to have a Varens bride which had been taken as a slight by King Aaron. Bloodshed had only ceased due to his untimely death while in the armoury. And then there’s the ghosts whose spirits plague even the Westerlands Jaime is glad to be free of. The godswood inspires a feeling of divine intimacy that Jaime has never known so fiercely, it nips at his flesh and claws at his lungs. The crypts are ridden with the magic of days past as dust seeps itself into his golden curls and bloodstained hands as the names of the fallen hang off his lips like threads of an unravelling tapestry. Beauty is seen by the beholder, they say, and yet the golden knight is unable to grasp the notion that an island of such wonders could be perceived as anything short of magnificent. 

As a growing boy he’d been taught little of Venetian history. Though Verona is an island of Westeros it may well be it’s own country entirely as snobby nobles ignore its existence and uphold their prejudices. Though it’s mostly resentment because the Venetian had kept their crown in spite of the fire of the dragons that had almost burnt them to a crisp. Pride is a double edged sword that noble houses cling to as a drowning man clings to wreckage and Jaime finds it pitiful that so many are unable to understand the beauty of an island so ancient. 

The ship sways with the breeze as Venetian spears guard Dowager Queen Adeline, Tarik and Amara as well as their unborn babe while he and Elena throw rocks into the seas. “Do you believe the rumours of Evelyn Varens, then?” he asks with pure curiosity draping every word, tone coloured in wonderment. He takes on a philosophical look, pondering. Jaime looks much younger in these moments. 

“I wouldn’t call it a love affair,” his betrothed replies with a cool tone, pretty features etched in thought of her own. Elena is garmented in his black breeches and a doublet as the corset of her gowns had strangled the life out of her. While an unlikely sight, Jaime thinks it suits her well as her beauty is made even more prominent. It’s like she’s the night sky, ebony ringlets and pools of honey blending to form a lovely combination indeed. Her figure is revealed quite loosely, the breeches she dons tight against her waist while her chest is amplified. Though the staring is rather unneeded as Jaime is able to identify the flecks of fear that embed themselves into her eyes. Therefore his fist has often met the faces of men whose hands have a tendency to wonder. His knuckles may well be perpetually bruised but the pain is worth it if only for the security that consumes Elena. ”Though an entanglement fits the situation, I suppose.” 

“They say Alicent Hightower had died a madwoman.” His voice takes on a tone of melancholy as his heart pangs in sympathy for the deceased queen. She’s painted in enemy colours for her follies because follies they’d been yet it had all been about the very thing Jaime is unable to escape. Legacy. And what a legacy she has, one shrouded in resentment and unwelcoming thoughts that must haunt her even in death. “And yet Evelyn had stayed.” He’d linked Alicent to Cersei long back, two women cut from the same cloth. Therefore in another life he’d have been Evelyn, putting his love in the wrong woman continuously with nothing to show for it. Where the Varens woman had forsaken her crown, Jaime would have forsaken his home. Already his innocence and freedom have been forsaken, it’s a blessing she hadn’t taken more from him. Elena may well be his salvation as he is hers. 

“Some say she’d killed herself after Alicent died.” Her tone is eerily cool, morbidity clinging to her words and Jaime is spooked if only for a moment because her tone is too cool. Once she’d have shuddered at such words but there’s now a melancholy that is part of her as she says death’s name so easily. 

“By flinging herself off a cliff,” Jaime replies wearily. 

“I don’t believe that.” The firmness of Elena’s words resonate with him and some broken part of him sags in relief because she’s lost so much and yet she doesn’t sound so broken as she’d been. There’s a hint of resilience that drapes her words, and a thoughtfulness as she continues to avert her eyes from the intensity of his gaze. She fiddles with the stones, dragging them against her flesh to create red blotches on her snowy skin. Tentatively, Jaime frees her of the stones and takes her hands within his because he can see the restlessness that plagues her. 

“And what do you believe?” he asks curiously. 

“If she had drowned they’d never have found her body.” And like that the shroud of mystery tightens itself around her and refuses to unravel as she must also think of Ashara Dayne whose body is yet to be recovered. No longer is she a maid of dreams with haunting purple eyes but a sad story turned to ashes, memory sewn into the summer air. The fallen Dayne siblings are a wonder, truly. Elena has shed tears for the maid with the haunting violet eyes, even visiting the godswood to pray for the soul of her beloved friend. Yet the sword of the morning is another story entirely. She and Amara refuse to say his name, and even Tarik tenses when someone dares utter it. It’s like Arthur Dayne is a ghost who scurries through the halls of Verona like a silent shadow, always lurking. Jaime could sense the rage embedded into Elena’s bones at the dead kingsguard, and he would never begrudge her for that for Arthur Dayne had been the very man Jaime had built his own image upon and now that reputation is like shards of glass at the feet of them all. He’d needed an ounce of closure for the not so knightly man who’d knighted him, deciding to offer his condolences to Amara who’d taken them with a sad smile. He was a true knight, Jaime had said, and her smile died. If he were true Dawn would have prevailed, she’d said with such certainty. My brother is no more virtuous than the bastard king he’d laid down his life for. Disdain and sorrow had draped her words and once more Jaime had been left reeling. “And yet she’d had the customary funeral of any Varens. Her ashes are mingled with the Sunset Sea.” Her voice is almost longing, words hypnotic like a sweet song he should sing along to and it chills him to his very bones. 

“How did she die?” he finds himself asking as he hadn’t had time to scour entire history books. 

“Naturally, they say.” She squeezes his hand and clings to it as if he’s her lifeline. All the stones thud to the ship ground with a clang as he places his sword hand atop hers and traps her within his warmth. The ghost of a smile plays at her lips as she continues to overlook the torrents of water that fall and rise with rhythmic ease. Jaime finds himself enthralled. 

“She isn’t one of your ghosts?” he jests laughingly, a grin blossoming atop his lips. Elena even grins in spite of himself, the sight becoming rarer and rarer as the death that plagues her embraces her like an old friend. It’s like she’s drowning and he’s the wreckage she clings to, not that he’d ever begrudge her of that as her touches are laced with stardust, inspiring tingles upon his flesh. If he is fire incarnate then she’s the ice that melts the flames. 

“I’d hope not,” Elena replies truthfully. Her expression had previously been of cool antipathy but she now gazes at him so earnestly his heart silently wrenches for the love he isn’t able to give. For the miracles he’s unable to perform. Like before, she clings to the security of his fingers and allows him to delicately place them on her jawline, his thumb tracing her plump lips and she takes in a breath. Though they have little care for propriety their desire has no need to be quenched as they’re shrouded in solitude, a private solar that leads out to the waters at their mercy. “I’d like to believe queens aren’t cursed,” she whispers, breath hot against his neck as Elena claims his lips with her own. She kisses him and it’s like the world falls away. It’s slow and tender, comforting in ways that words could never be. His hand rests below her ear, his thumb caressing her cheek as their breaths mingle. She runs her fingers down his spine, pulling him closer until there’s no space left between them and he can feel the beating of his heart against her chest. Till they’re one breath and one body. Her lips as soft and his brain lights on fire and the warmth spreads throughout his entire body. After that Jaime’s addicted. Those kisses are his salvation and a torment. He lives for them and he’d die with the memory of them on his lips as her tongue battles with his own, one he enjoys as a hand falls to her waist bringing her closer, closer, closer. 

Casterly Rock is a castle carved out of a colossal stone hill beside the Sunset Sea. Many say that it’s so intricately destined to resemble the head of a lion against the sunlight and the rumours resonate with Elena and Jaime both as they can outline the teeth and the mane. Paws, even. The Casterlys of antiquity built a ringfort that’s twenty feet thick on the peak, and as millenia have passed its natural defenses have been expanded with walls, gates, and watchtowers. The base of the Rock contains large sea-carved caverns. The stone has been mined for thousands of years, so there are hundreds of mineshafts in the depths of the Rock, as well as yet untouched gold veins. The Rock has been measured at three times the height of the Wall or the Hightower of Oldtown. It’s almost two leagues long from west to east, and contains tunnels, dungeons, storerooms, barracks, halls, stables, stairways, courtyards, balconies, and gardens. In the bowels of the Rock are rooms where caged lions were once kept, and cells for the worst prisoners. 

The Lion's Mouth, the main entry to Casterly Rock, is an enormous natural cavern reaching two hundred feet high. Its steps are now wide enough for twenty riders. Its port has docks, wharves, and shipyards and is accessible by longships and cogs. From below the Rock thunder can be heard, where the sea comes in. There are four gates, each ten feet thick and made of hard steel. Suddenly Elena understands the myths surrounding this piece of stone as it may well be impregnable. She imagines it able to outlast a siege of even twenty years, the thought causing her to bristle against the chill of the wind but she’s steady within Jaime’s arms encircling her waist as she looks out to the beyond where she’ll spend the rest of her days. 

“That rock is larger than the Wall,” she says with wonderment, eyes widened and head tilted as she takes it all in. Elena’s hiraeth is tangible as a sadness takes hold of her tone, voice dipping lower as Jaime imagines to ponder over all she’ll lose. The Rock may be the grandest castle within the kingdoms yet it’s never had a homely feeling that a home should have. Instead an emptiness had always lingered amongst the halls, spreading into him as he’d indulged himself in mundane pleasures to numb everything he was unable to feel. His father is a fearsome man who inspires no live within his people and yet Jaime had seen firsthand the love the Venetian had had for their king and their rulers. It’s more than loyalty. Devotion and allegiance because they’d loved Cassian Varens as a man loves his brother. They have faith in Tarik as a man has hope for his son. In hindsight, it’s maddening, the prejudices that never truly die because envy is a cretin. Malgrave Keep had been the home he’s never had and he’ll miss it like an old friend. He makes note to visit at least each summer in spite of the journey, anything to quench Elena’s yearning for home. 

“I once tried to climb it when I was younger,” he says with nostalgia colouring his tone, a soft smile tugging at his lips and it may well be the picture of young love. 

She grins heartily, the corners of her lips tugged upwards. “You didn’t!” She’s much happier and he clings to that, terrified that it’ll cascade through his fingers and evaporate to dust on the ocean floor. 

“I’d been bed bound for a week.” That week had gone by tantalisingly slowly, though it’d been a good period for reflection as Jaime had gone cliff jumping the following week. Cersei had feared him dead, and then he’d bobbed back up to the surface with the immortality of youth etched on his features while she’d been wroth. Thinking of those times causes an aching within his chest. Something horrible. Not necessarily nostalgia or ardent longing, perhaps regret as he wishes they’d honoured their mother’s memory. 

“I once jumped into the waterfall,” Elena then says. There’d been rocks at the whirlpool, smeared with the blood of centuries past. Jaime had been horrified yet it had appeared to be Elena’s safe haven as she’d taken him to sit atop the torrents of water that had fallen like soldiers. His breeches had been dampened, as had the edges of her gown but he’d felt a semblance of liveliness then. They’d go there each day, surrounded by ghosts and wildflowers and raspberry tarts and rippling torrents of water that smash into you like a snowstorm. It’d been truly beautiful and the water enthralling as he’d been captivated by the sheer blueness of it all. Elena had looked on sadly, recalling Maks’ final breaths. Her words draw a vivid picture and Jaime oft finds himself missing the two brothers he’s never known as his own heart. Stefan, the maester in the making and Maksim, a king in the making. But the Gods had cut their threads and tied them together, fated to die as boys who’d seen so little and men who deserved to live. They’d have soared, Jaime believes with his whole heart. 

“I thought you‘d hated swimming,” he says with the mischief of a thousand cruel gods and she loosens beneath his arms. 

“It was after Maks died,” she reveals quietly, the tenderness of her words pulling at his heartstrings, “I stupidly thought he might speak to me.” Elena had been but eleven when her brother had perished. All she’s known is grief that makes a home within her. A grief he’s unable to subside no matter how much he longs to because gods are cruel like that. They render children to hopelessness and life in the shadows while they prosper up in the heavens for their dwellings matter not, neither do the million dead children piled up. They take and they take with nothing left to give. 

“I know they’d be proud.” All four of them would be. 

✧───✧───✧

The introductions had been curt and cold, Elena reverting to an automaton as she’d been forced to converse with Jaime’s father who’d been unnervingly tense himself. Always sparing a second glance to Elena herself as well as Jaime, careful to mince his words and intentions. His uncles Kevan and Tygett as well his aunt Genna had been stern in a much softer way, still bearing the coolness of the Lannister patriarch but there’d been some sense semblance of warmth in their words. Jaime’s thoughts on them have always been frank yet the unhindered adoration he bares for his uncle Gerion had been unmistakeable, the pair embracing like father and son. 

Behind the legs of the youngest Lannister uncle had been a small boy with abnormally large hands and feet. Elena had heard the rumours of Tyrion Lannister, bards singing of the monstrosity born to Tywin Lannister and his dearest wife who’d perished while birthing this creature. They’d sang of a tail between his legs, claws in place of fingers yet Elena had seen a boy. A boy who’d known naught but death and damnation, the tiniest inkling of hope within his emerald opals that so resemble Jaime’s own despite the flecks of black within them. 

They stand now, within the confines of the library adorned with books ranging from the Dance of Dragons to the Blackfyre rebellions, the arduous histories surrounding them like the cold winter air that nips at their flesh. 

The first greeting between her and Tyrion had been a sweet sight, Jaime insistent on locking themselves within the library’s door to shield them all of his father’s ramblings of stupid monsters because Tyrion hadn’t been scorned for being a living and breathing boy of the Lannister name. He hadn’t been treated as blood traitor, some foreign alien from the lands of always winter. His uncle Gerion had been all too happy to allow them an escape, directing himself to Tywin’s rage which he’d taken with pleasure. 

“Jaime tells me you like dragons,” Elena says to break the festering silence. Not an awkward one because it’d been some moments of analysis on both their parts, Jaime the bridge between them. How much does he know? she wonders. Left with naught but a distant father and a cruel sister he’d had to indulge himself in the stories that shape the world, Jaime had said, though he’d had Kevan and Gerion and Genna to keep him sane for they bare a certain fondness for the youngest Lannister lion. Has he heard the rumours? she wonders yet again. 

His large eyes bulge back at her. “I asked for one for my name day,” he replies dejectedly, “but uncle Gerion said they died a century ago.” There’s a certain hope colouring his tone, as if the dragons will reawaken and impose fire and ashes on Westeros once more. Does he know of what they call Jaime? she muses grimly. Elena longs to quench any queries he has and yet she understands that the story is not hers to tell. 

“I imagine you’d sought out the dragon skulls at the Red Keep?” she asks gingerly, features etched in her own sort of wonder, firmly recalling the skulls that Aerys had look upon with a glint of madness dancing within his eyes of a madman. A madman, that’s all he’d been. 

“The King hid them,” he responds, as if afraid to say he’d most likely gone in search of them. Jaime almost sniggers at his timidness, her betrothed having told her much of his brother’s characteristics such as his intellect and wonder that trails him like the shadow of an old ghost. 

“You don’t like the King?” she asks with a slight tugging of her lips, seeing the disdain etched on his youthful features because Robert Baratheon is a fearsome man in his own right. Rhaegar Targaryen had been mad while the usurper is cruel. Two men on the different sides of the same coin. Perhaps Lyanna Stark had been damned either way but Elena will curse her regardless. 

“He’s scary,” Tyrion replies truthfully and Jaime sniggers because that is a reality they all understand. Almost too well for they all have their tellings with cruel men. 

They spend the rest of the night within their own bubble, Tyrion telling her of his dreams of ashes, asking of ghosts while tumbling as uncle Gerion had taught him. Jaime rivals him oftentimes, though his skills are no longer as refined as his brother’s due to the leagues that had been put between them. They teach Elena simultaneously, each excelling at a certain tumble while her breeches only tighten. (That had been another story as Jaime’s father had been most wroth. And then Lord Tywin’s greeting with Tarik and her mother had been as frosty as the icicles within the plumes of the Wall). She should sleep soundly that night and yet … 

Casterly Rock lacks all sense of feeling as she wanders through the halls with homesickness trailing her like a shadow. Fear is the voice of the people as their words are of silence, preferring to be seen and not heard by their liege lord who knows naught but cruelty. Though the Lannisters really do shit gold as streams of it hang from the windows and the chandeliers, ornate tidings for an ornate affair as the wedding looms on the horizon. But that vow had been sealed long before with unchaste kisses and stolen glances, hardened hearts and ardent longing engraved into their bones. No longer does doubt flood into her mind, the words ones she’s repeated for what feels like a lifetime of regret. 

So much of it in so short a time. A six lettered word that drapes death and damnation upon those who think it, bitterly twisting into her chest like a knife causing a horrible ache that’s unable to be quenched. The regret is a mix of heartache and sorrow, earnestness blending with shame. Her own or someone else’s she doesn’t know, and perhaps she’ll never know but it’s there nonetheless. 

The night is dark and full of terrors as she faces the ghosts she’d abandoned, following them to a world of rocks that overlook the seashores with pointed edges and towering falls. From Elena’s point of vision she’s able to outline rippling waves that swish gently and the sand that’s dampened by the tides. When once the sky had been splattered with bursts of orange and pink which shone in hazes against the setting sun which is now naught but a vivid daydream, the night reawakens against the dying light. Darkness engulfs the Westerlands, reducing the view of the Sunset Sea to a piercing vale of blackness that sparkles. The moon bares its beauty and when it’d once set its light upon the maiden fair and the golden knight whose beauty shines brighter than the thousands of stars which resemble the dying embers of a fire, it now pales in comparison to the fleeting warmth that had been bestowed upon the Varens Princess. Constellations shimmer like fragmented jewels against her hollow skin with stardust no longer smeared across her bruised lips as her hands intertwine with befalling tragedy. Heart beating with the mortality of youth as naught else stands proof of her being and soul thrumming with eternal misery, Elena Varens has since learnt the merit that comes with sacrifice. 

She glides towards the cliffs with pointed edges, suddenly enamoured with the Sunset Sea since it may well be the only remainder of home as the same waters fall into the shore of Verona like a pumping heartbeat. Like a steady breath. Sitting against the edge, Elena has the view of everything she’d once loved before her watchful gaze. The tide appears drawn to the horizon, waves rolling in and out, its rhythm as steady as her own. Perhaps that's why she feels so soothed here, her heartbeat finding synchrony with those sea-foam arches. It’s a world of grey as Elena’s unable to outline the horizon of the sky from the end of the seas. Like she’s at the end of the world with nothing to show for it but shallow breaths and nimble skin. 

With horror she recalls the final day of their voyage. Dawn had broken out like a bleeding wound, the distant scudding clouds turn crimson by the sun's rays. The night had been arguably the worst of her life. The sailors had tried to prepare for sudden, violent storms that erupt and cease so quickly, but it’s impossible. The worst had happened that night; with no warning, total darkness prevailed as clouds thickened and the sky was stricken, blotting out the starlight. The wind arose to push the still waters to choppy, which morphed into mountains of angry waves. Sailors struggled and slipped on the soaked deck and panic had set it. The wind slammed the rain into their faces as if it were solid matter, her face had been raw and the water had filled her eyes. Somehow, the ship had pressed on, bravely climbing up the waves, and then crashing down in a cascade of wood and water. It was during one of these heart stopping plummets that a surge of water broke onto the deck, they’d held tightly onto the mast, onto the ropes, onto each other, onto anything that might save them. The water drained back into the sea, retreating to its master, but the damage had been done, Natu, the weakest of the group had found the pull of the water to be too strong. There was nothing they could have done to save her, she just slipped. They’d searched for her in the water but when she went under that final wave, she never resurfaced. 

The eerie darkness of that night will never escape her memory. The pitch-black curtain draped over the sky, and the twisted, warped shapes that the stars made against the blackness. The milky speckles twirled and danced along the sky in various patterns, tugging at the corners of her lips in a way that almost made her smile. Nothing from my life could touch her in the first fleeting moments. Not a single thing could harm her. She’d stared up at the sky and studied the silver glow of the moon. She smiled down at Elena with love so intense it warmed her soul like a fireplace on a cold winter's night. And there she was, overlooking the seas at midnight to escape the reality that’ll soon take her hand, not wanting to do anything but cry. But the look that the moon had given her didn't cause the storm to go on inside of her. Instead, a hot blue fire flickered in her heart and soon started to grow, eating at all of the dark emotions in its path. Her worries had been burned away, if only for a fleeting moment, and the tears that were starting to form at the corners of her eyes melted down my cold face with a rush of relief. 

She’d been a ghost in the following moments. Ghosts are the shadows of the dead, crisscrosses of betrayals and the secret to every war fought in darkness. There are no swords where the real fight happens, but words that pray for life, words that prey for power, words that prey for revenge and words that pray for the light that’s been shielded from them for so long. Everyone has them, yet some take away the parts most loved and others eat away at the hollowness before it can devour you body and soul. The touch of the dead is manifested into love or a stupid, fulfilling void that’s a cave of nothingness. Like souls reduced to ashes on a barren land, only that land is the crevices of one’s mind as all will to live just collapses as an implosion is on the horizon and the sun fades and fades and fades till darkness is all that remains. 

Darkness is all that remains. 

The ghosts dance before her, crisscrossing their paths and ebbing into the tides she’d run into senselessly. The outlines of their faces are vivid, golden eyes and raven tresses flooding her view as the hooded veil of death hangs above them all. Similarly, the black veil that shrouds her flesh only tightens and it stops her bloodstream and leaves her gasping for the air she’s been shielded from. The ghosts blur away, one by one, and the pain intensifies till she’s nothing but molten flesh and a mind of monsters. The air is chilly and she bristles but Elena’s unable to ignore the movement of their fingers, silently begging her to follow them into the world beyond where all pain will cease and life will be but a vivid daydream that’d been stolen from her. The sea is now golden, illuminated by their light that’s unable to be taken from them and an eerie peace consumes her as she rises and takes a small step forward. 

Only, footsteps are to be heard as life and death hangs by a single thread, a meshwork of crimson and turquoise and black and cerulean. Red and gold shall be her shroud. 

“ELENA,” screams a voice with perilous fear draping her tone. Amara, the Princess guesses and some part of her deflates as she’s left envious of the seagulls who have it all. Still, she’s paralysed, unable to move, one step away from falling into the abyss and never returning. Perhaps she’d be a falling star in another life, maybe a shooting star though Elena knows the unlikelihood of it all because girls like her weren’t made to soar. They give and they give till they’re hollow souls and brittle bones, a wilting flower amidst a meadow of flowers that are painted in the fluorescence of the gods who’ve given her naught but death and damnation. 

Amara edges closer but keeps her distance in fear of the possible consequences. She holds out a tentative hand, Elena just able to outline it as her face is to far too be seen. “Come here,” she says gently, every word draped in the fear of a thousand cruel gods and Elena wavers, if only for a moment. 

“It’s peaceful,” the Princess replies, staring blankly into the abyss as a calamity washes over her. 

“We can talk, I promise,” she trembles and Elena’s heart wrenches because she’ll never be able to let all the apologies that should be. Instead she exists between a thin veil of life and death and fuck it’s closing in on her. Like the tide, slowly, but it can’t be stopped regardless. “Just take my hand.” For a fleeting moment Elena thinks of throwing herself to waist, to become one with the wailing women and water witches, to render her soul to the sea gods. But the sorrow that shrouds her good sister’s words are a barrier that holds her back and so she relents. Slowly. One step back then another, eyes glazed over in a piercing nothingness as she settles for sitting as she had been, feet dangling in the air with the touch of old ghosts who thrive on this tasteless sight. Amara sits by her side, the distance between them but an inch as silence encompasses all life they know. “I’ll never know what you went through,” her good sister begins with weariness, features etched in a sort of understanding, “but I am always here.” Her words are definite and firm and hard like nails scratching against steel but her words are needed. So desperately. 

“It should have been me,” Elena replies earnestly, unable to forget the battered bodies of those she’d loved as her own heart, bloody and bruised and broken. 

“It shouldn’t have been any of you,” Amara says with a sad smile, reaching her eyes with unshed tears. 

“I can’t see him everyday. Knowing he did it, he’s the reason why I’m like this. Soiled and broken and everything a Princess isn’t meant to be. How can I be sane when my good father is the brunt of my pain and the face of nightmares?” she asks helplessly, tears draping her words and tone coloured in melancholy that clings to her as joy had done once. 

“Say the word and Tarik will whisk you away.” Her words are soft, hand intertwined with Elena’s own as she stares out blankly. “Jaime is a good man, we know, but all you have to do is say the word. I can rouse your brother and your mother now, and we’d be gone before anyone of significance would notice. Say the word, that’s it.” She makes it sound so easy, as if strife wouldn’t be brought upon a broken land. As if the cost of her freedom wouldn’t be her motherland. So Elena must persevere. She must survive in spite of all the skies that have fallen. But perhaps in another life she’d live. 

“I can’t,” she says weakly. So painstakingly raw, gaze falling from bloom to bloom as the tears that threaten to fall will never mount to the oceans the stars had wept on the news of their deaths. The black veil that shrouds her voice will never match up to the black tapestry woven into the seems of the air she’d inhaled through broken lungs and exhaled through cracked lips. The bards lie when they say the pain heals, fading like rainfall. It’s always there, twisting like a double edged sword. 

The guilt and agony and confusion strangle her, is a triple-edged sword. It forces her to feel it for both Jaime and all those who come in between. But Jaime’s and her planes are green, promising in a doomed way. And yet their planes are already blackened and burned, with the earth having been salted. However; do not even the decaying and dead matters have their refined beauty? The kind so little comprehend? It feels like she’s drowning and no one’s there to pull Elena back to the shores. All she can do is cling to wreckage as drowning women do. Nothing had ever been easy for her; yet it had always boasted clear, comprehensible answers. Now; nothing makes sense to her and she can solve even less. Because Jaime is Jaime, the knight who’d forsaken his vows for her in turn dismembering every semblance of honour and duty he’d possessed because virtue had prevailed. Knighthood over kingsguard. His eyes are summer personified as flecks of bronze stray in and out, becoming the earth she’d once loved so. When the terror had set in he’d hold her with delicate touches and soothing words. And yet the outlines of his handsome features so often contort into that of his father’s and the terror sets in once more. A terror he’s unable to salivate, he exacerbates it and it’s horrible because Jaime Lannister holds her heart whole simultaneously tearing it apart like nothing more than embroidery. 

Amara’s features are a hybrid of understanding and earnestness, words having silenced her as she knows nothing she can say will ease the myriad of feelings the Princess feels. Melancholy, shame, humiliation, regret, sorrow, love, hate, anger, bitterness, tranquility, horror. All at once, like a sword with countless edges. The sound of the rippling waves intensify, the scent of the saltwater flooding into her like the tide does. The pointed edges of the cliff instils a stinging pain within her loins but no such resistance lingers as Elena allows her legs to drift while the wind nips at her flesh like a summer’s song. Elena had once been that summer’s song, each melody sweeter than the last as her words had been enthralling and hypnotic. Like a siren of the seas. Now she’s a war hymn made flesh, embers of tragedy mounted atop each other. 

“You must hold resentment towards Arthur,” her good sister eventually says with scrutiny of her own. Not aimed towards Elena but her deceased brother. The words are bitter and not without a trace of malice. 

“Speaking ill of the dead will do naught to quench my pain,” Elena eventually replies after moments of reverie and intensified anger, exhaustion colouring her tone because that betrayal is all she thinks about. The resentment is hidden but it’s there, clawing at her ribcage and taking the air out of her lungs like a ravenous beast that longs to be unleashed and bring down the heads of the nefarious beings who’d taken it all. But nefarious heads always regenerate. 

“Noble heads never regenerate.” Elena almost smiles. 

“He was your brother.” Perplexity slams into her, unsure of why she even attempts to hold anything but anger for a man who’d betrayed his motherland. Perhaps he died a hero’s death to all outside the confines of Dorne but they won’t forget. Not when he’d abandoned his Princess in the hour of direst need. All to guard a damned tower as a girl had been brutalised. And thus duty and honour had bowed, virtue unravelling thread by thread as Arthur Dayne is a turncloak. 

“My grief is a crisscross of anger and loss.” A melancholic tone takes ahold of Amara as the earnestness of her words is striking because Arthur is a traitor. But he’s one who succumbed to his own weakness, digging his own grave as his people will curse him till their dying breaths. Arthur Dayne, songs are sang but they aren’t true. 

“Rik said your son shall be called Arthur.” 

Arthur Varens, songs will be sang and the songs will be true. Elena smiles, eyes alight with something akin to joy. “A babe who bares his name with none of his dishonour.” Amara’s features are etched in thoughtfulness, amethyst opals alive as the outline of her face blends into Ashara’s. Their resemblance is startling, true beauties of the south who mirror each other in spirit and soul alike. Though they now reside on the different side of the same coin. The living and the dead. “Perhaps he’ll cloud the anger.” Her tone is now a hybrid of conflict and hope, as if one babe could salvage all that’s been lost to the fires. 

“I fear he can hear you,” Elena jests inappropriately, though the corners of Amara’s lips are tugged into the ghost of a smile. 

“Gods be damned and Arthur be damned,” she mutters like a curse. An incantation determined to ring through the brittle bones of the fallen as the memories they’ve left behind are naught but words in the wind and ashes on a barren land. 

“He died valiantly.” Elena grimaces. 

Amara looks to her incredulously. “Dawn failed him.” Forged from the heart of a falling star, Dawn is a longsword of pride and prestige. The swords of the morning and yet he’d not lived to see another. 

“Swords are swords,” Elena points out almost laughingly. The rest is left unspoken but Amara understands it well enough as she nods her head reverently. 

“And fools are fools.” All traitors are fools yet not all fools are traitors. 

“Men are men.” Men are fools. 

“A man.” She clings to the last word like it’s the thread that holds her together, mustering every ounce of pain she can find into one syllable. “That’s all he was.” Arthur Dayne was not the divine knight he’d been thought to be. He’d been a foolish man whose duty had overshadowed family and once more is Elena reminded of the Tully words. Duty is simple and yet honour is not so clear cut. Would it be less honourable to abandon your closest friend in a war he’d triggered rather than lay your life for the woman you’d once loved so and the children born of her womb? Knights cling to threads of honour but it all eventually unravels like embroidery and all that’s left is shattered glass that bleeds them dry. That bleeds her dry. “Were he a true knight Dawn would have prevailed.” Who will wield Dawn now? she wonders, for true knights no longer exist. 

✧───✧───✧

Wedding guests pour in from the Lion’s Gate, ranging from Stormlords who bristle at the sight of her whilst maintaining a glamour of ambiguity to Reachmen who’d seldom left their safe haven as the war had festered on. The Princess is able to identify Lord Randyll Tarly, the only commander to have reigned a victory against the rebels. The animosity is thick as each and every man has lost someone, whether it be a son or a father or a brother. And something, whether it be their courage or their innocence. They glower towards each other, no one able to lower their guard for even a moment as the sacrifices paid weigh heavy on them all. The Westerlords are unable to meet her gaze while the Riverlords’ features are etched in a kind of pity that causes the knife to twist further. The Venetian and Northern lords alike are strong in their strength, a kind of pride held within them all. The lords of the Vale look to Elena as if she’s an unknown creature, the princess able to make out the features of Lyn Corbray who’d slain her uncle Lewyn. Unable to hide her hatred, she’d sneered like a feral wolf and he’d been hysterical. The lords of the Crownlands aren’t subtle with their sympathy while those of the Iron Island eye her with an animalistic lust and it’s frightening. King Robert and Queen Cersei stand idle at the dais with looks of disdain clouding their proud features and Elena takes pleasure in their discomfort because nostalgia is a drug. Meanwhile the Dornish have all but denounced the rest of the world as Doran withers away alongside his bannermen because Dornish history is the history of internal conflicts, each lord holding a knife to the throat of another lord yet all it’d take is one intruder and all knives would be turned the same direction. Dorne had loved Elia and they mourn her all the same, a notion the northerners are unable to understand. Elena rakes through the crowd for Oberyn, who’d promised her of his impending arrival. 

His eyes are gaunt and the complexion of youth is since lost as lines are etched on his flesh, of toil and trouble. But his eyes are warm in spite of the scorn he radiates, glaring scathingly to those who place him under their scrutiny. So scathing that even the gods would remain unscathed as it burns because Oberyn is fire incarnate. His rage flickers like flames, forged into an armour of the hardest steel while her own is like a tidal wave. Her cousin had once been a man of jests and now melancholy clings to him as it clings to her. He’s garmented in traditional Dornish attire and the sigh causes a smile to blossom upon her lips. Within his arms is a babe donned in colours of the sun, staring back at with the golden eyes she knows like the back of her hand. A discrete glance to Oberyn and her suspicions are confirmed as he directs a pointed smile towards her. 

Rosario Martell. 

No longer is she a Targaryen for she is now the trueborn daughter of Oberyn, mothered by a common woman down south. Those who’d known Elia could easily outline her features within the face of her daughter who holds an anger of her own at the tender age of almost two. She’s determined, and beautiful all the more. Beside her, the eyes of Jaime and Tarik widen in dawning realisation as small smiles bloom on their hardened features. 

Lord Tywin had arranged a feast in celebration of the coming peoples. Secretly, this is his attempt to reconcile with Dorne because the sun never wilts in spite of all the skies that have fallen and blackened like the blood of the damned. From across the room Jaime’s father bristles, a sense of dread etched on his withered features as he locks eyes with the man who seeks retribution with the cunning of the serpent. His paranoia will strangle him like a double edged sword as deceit clouds his judgement. Oberyn longs for an imminent bloodbath, to bathe in the mortality of his foes who’d taken all while receiving naught. However Elena knows that Doran will allow their vengeance to fester because Dorne will be paid its dues. Within the confines of his solar he’ll be planning the downfall of the Lannister name as theirs is a shroud of orange and yellow because the sun never wilts. 

Standing before her, his eyes soften considerably so as he cradles the babe tenderly. Elena oft forgets that he possesses a father’s intuition yet the sheer adoration in his eyes speaks a thousand words. His love will be manifested into legacy. That of Elia and Rosa. The thought should be soothing and yet it causes an innate discomfort to emerge from the depths of her chest where the knife is still firmly embedded. 

First, Rosa’s within the plumes of incandescence as Oberyn hands her to Tarik who’s ghastly pale because those eyes would be recognisable anywhere. It’s the single trait all of Oberyn’s daughters share, though Aegon hadn’t had those eyes there’d been flecks of the hue firmly planted. They’d been their mother’s children through and through. The pools of honey enthral them all as they form a shield around the babe who they all love with a mother’s love. Because she is Elia’s daughter. Oberyn’s niece. The babe Elena and Jaime had cared for as their own. There’s a certain mischief within her eyes that glows like a candlestick, illuminating the path ahead. 

A silent promise passes through them all. A promise sealed with a sister’s affection and everything bad in this cruel world for sorrow and heartache are twin blades that press against their flesh simultaneously. Where it’d once bowed with duty this is now about homage and prosperity. A secret they’ll take to their graves. 

Before the silence can be broken, Lord Tywin interrupts their tryst with a firm glance. Jaime is unyielding under his gaze when once he’d cower. The shield wall strengthens and Rosa is hidden from the sight of the monster who’d caused her to be an orphan. A word which deepens the hollowness within Elena’s chest as she directs a pointed look towards her mother whose eyes are bleak as the shadow of death creeps up on her slowly. 

“Lord Tywin,” Oberyn begins with false courtesies, joviality colouring his tone because deceit comes first nature to the Dornish who’ve learnt to perfect it because it’s an art that only prospers in this age of uncertainty, “our previous departure had been seen with the upmost courtesy worthy of the Warden of the West.” His tone is now mocking and his features are dangerous as blood clouds his vision. 

“I recall you and the Princess fondly, my Prince.” His voice is strained, as if he’s swallowing his pride like Dornish red at the back of throat. Bitter and tasteless. Elena contorts to the selfless self she’s developed in his presence, regarding him with naught but cold courtesies and curses and unspoken promises. They all take note of the way he refuses to say her name. Elia Martell, Princess of Dorne, first of her name. 

“Ah I believe you suggested to marry Elia to Tyrion, his name is?” Venom grazes his tone, that of a serpent which hasn’t yet shed its skin because all Dornishmen are vipers but the Martells are the worst of them all. Oberyn is the snake’s sting while Doran is the grass that hides it. Though in truth that analogy undermines Doran’s true strengths. Where Oberyn is a snake’s sting his elder brother is the tears of Lys. Deadly and menacing, he comes across as acquiescent when his is a mind of pages to be scribed upon. The sting is not yet stung and the scorpion has not yes risen but a day will come when they remember. Dorne never forgets because the sun never shrivels. “While Cersei was to be wedded to Rhaegar,” he finishes cooly, indulging in the further strain of Lord Tywin’s ancient features as they all know that the Lord of Lannister is unable to retort back as he’d like to. 

To his credit, the man barely flinches. “Your mother and my wife were good friends,” he says and she has to stifle back laughter because the murderous expression that graces Oberyn’s features is one to behold. No longer does he look bendable as the old lion had thought because his house words speak true now more than ever. Elia had been bowed, bent and broken but Oberyn will be unbowed, unbent and unbroken. Lord Tywin will be bowed from his place of prestige atop a rock larger than the bloody Wall. Bent as he’s humbled in the sight of the old gods and the new. And broken as mercy is a virtue he won’t receive for he is a dead man walking. One day the world shall see. “And so I wouldn’t like to sever our relationship anymore. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours?” he asks tersely and the audacity is staggering as they all bristle simultaneously. 

“We’ve all heard the rumours, Lord Tywin.” A lion has its claws while a snake has its poison. 

“I can assure you that I have done nothing of the sort. I would like to continue our friendship,” he says with the cordiality of a feral dog. 

“I imagine you wish for your youngest to be betrothed to Arianne,” Oberyn barks out, unable to shield the rage that consumes him like wildfire, spreading into his lungs and his bones. It sears, as if his limbs are torn apart and blood vessels imploding within themselves. It’s an anger none of them have ever known so they can’t possibly tame it because it’s like an implosion of blood and stars. Elena has met Arianne only once and yet the girl had been as charismatic as men triple her age. She possesses the cunning of her uncle and the shrewdness of her father, arguably the worst of her uncle and the best of her father. 

Jaime’s father has the good sense to refrain from answering, allowing Oberyn to continue with his war of words that may well end in tears. “Though any daughter born of your daughter is welcomed to be betrothed to my brother’s son. I assure you, Lord Tywin, we don’t harm little girls in Dorne nor do we blame a son for his father’s actions. Elia thought highly of Ser Jaime and I believe him worthy of Elena’s hand. Those are the counts of my arrival in this hostile land. What does that make us? I wonder. Distance relatives who share no blood, though I suppose that’s for the better. Wouldn’t you agree, Lord Tywin?” His foreign accent is accentuated in his fit of rage coated in antipathy. 

The lion smiles coyly. “Noble men in my part of the country don’t enjoy the same lifestyle as our counterparts in Dorne.” 

The tension is thick enough to be wielded with a blade and so Jaime takes hold of Oberyn’s attention, ignoring his father entirely which earns him a wroth glare he doesn’t care for. “Elena and I plan to travel these lands and the ones beyond after our nuptials. She tells me of the Water Gardens and the twin thrones.” His father leaves and the pair are enthralled in a conversation of hushed whispers, Tarik having left while Elena listens in curiously. 

“Ah yes,” her cousin replies. “Built by Maron Martell for the Princess Daenerys. I am sure you’ve heard of King Aaron?” he then asks, “the King who’d perished in the armoury while planning a bloody battle for the slights taken against his name. Envious of my ancestor Myriah, nonetheless.” 

“The gods have a fickle sense of humour indeed,” Jaime replies earnestly as now the Martells and Varens are tethered through blood and tears, a bond unable to be severed by the stars. 

✧───✧───✧

The previous tension has somewhat evaporated as nobles indulge themselves in the many activities available, the king drinking himself to an early grave as a serving wench tarries herself onto his lap while his queen glares at him scathingly. Amara and Oberyn take to dancing as Tarik and their mother speak in hushed whispers as she delicately holds Rosa, the Starks embroiled in an awkward silence as Catelyn Tully must bare resentment for Ned’s bastard child while their twins are in a deep slumber within the nursery. The greeting between she and Ned had been cordial at best, Elena unable to hide much of her disdain which the Stark Lord had understood, melancholy clinging to him as madness had clung to Rhaegar Targaryen. Somewhat meekly, he’d introduced her to Robb and Lorena as the bastard Jon Snow had been left in Winterfell, his wife unwilling to allow her stepson to travel with them. The Stark girl has much of Lyanna’s features while the boy bares the Tully genes, Elena had smiled if only for a moment and then he’d been off. 

She sits at the high table alongside Jaime who’s embroiled in a tense conversation with his father. Before she’s able to ask anything of it, her betrothed rises from his place and implores the Princess to follow. Gliding towards him, able to make out the fawning of the distance, they make their way to a terrace that overlooks the Sunset Sea all its glory. The lingering light is obliterated by the rapidly falling night. The once salmon and purple sky has transformed into a vast expanse of jet-black that engulfs the city. A canopy of luminous stars materialises amongst the ocean of blackness. Some are dull, merely flickering into existence every now and then, but there’s an adequate amount of shimmering stars to illuminate the dark, moonless night. The sea glistens, mirroring the dazzling assemblage of glittering stars and the luminescence from the shores and the skies that line the view. The faint wind brushes against the water’s surface, the ripples ruffling the stillness of the surface and shattering the reflection of the harbour. In the serenade of the black, the stars are a choir; they are lights that sing in infinite patterns. Sometimes eyes need music, and the darker the night the sweeter the song. The pure black of the night is her comfort, the blanket of generous velvet that keeps Elena safe. It’s the pure black that makes the moon so beautiful, that makes a stage for her to stand upon. Because while the sun never wilts the moon never shrivels. The black night holds the Princess close until the dawn, always her cloak of safety until she’s ready for the dawn. It’s that friendly blackness that allows her eyes to rest and let her dreams take centre stage. It’s the pure black of the night that gives the stars their beauty, and in it her heart is safe, her soul serene. When the night comes, look heavenward and be willing to see that the stars still shine; for the dawn will come. Summer night luminous with starlight, moon full and bright. He strolls through the inky darkness of the mid-winter night like a God made flesh with his luscious tufts of golden hair and emerald eyes that glisten like pennies during torrential rainfall. 

His features are etched in earnest, a slither of shame embedded into his eyes, a wavering smile written upon his lips she’s come to know like the back of her hand. All semblance of a glamour has dissipated. No longer is the man he pretends to be, of dishonour and injustice as he faces the scrutinising noble (wicked) men and women who deem him unworthy and unjust. Jaime, just Jaime. 

Jaime who she knows. 

She knows how his cheeks are flooded with warmth and eyes alight with a spark not even the gods could tame as he talks of his brother. The one he’d fathered and mothered and sistered as he knows how because he mourns for the love his father and sister are unable to give and manifests that love into a protectiveness that would burn the world for the brother he loves so. The way pride and prestige colour his tone as he speaks of the boy who dreams of dragons and dancing, the smell of burnt ashes flooding into his nostrils as his reveries are one of peace and prosperity. The boy who knows naught but scorn and condemnation, death and damnation yet looks to the world with bright and unearthly eyes, there not being a cruel bone within his body. The boy who could change the world were it to let him, he who possesses the knowledge of a thousand scholars and the intellect his father loathes him to possess, he who is a Prince of Casterly, his a song of sin and sorrow and suns because the sun never wilts. 

She knows the boy who’d dreamt of flyaway trips to Essos alongside his favourite uncle, abandoning all he’d lived and loved for a life in the stars because Jaime Lannister is a man who knows treachery and tragedy as she knows courage and constellations. He’s a fighter, a wonderer who’d be naught more than a bird in a gilded cage within the confines of Casterly Rock because ruling is an art he’s unable to perfect. As such, valour and virtue are arts that not even the honourable could master for he lives by those words. Against vice and cowardice and head. 

She knows the boy who awakes to visions of fire and death and damnation while a madman looms over him, tainting everything he’s ever loved. She knows the boy who’d saved a city from becoming naught but charred remains and ashes, goodness guiding his hand. She knows the boy whose facade has dissipated before her very eyes, his armour consisting of arrogance and pride and the Lannister name crumbling to dust that sews the memory of itself into the summer air. Elena Varens knows Jaime Lannister, not the kingslayer. 

He’s garmented in a velvet doublet of Lannister crimson which accentuates his string jawline, black breeches of leather clinging to him. Elena has yet to unravel the black veil that shrouds her flesh and so her gown is one of blackness. The kind that wants only to hold the stars and help them to shine all the brighter. It’s a warm black that hugs her like the embrace of her mother, and within it's safety she can feel her own soul all the more clearly, that innocent inborn spark. Her ebony ringlets cascade like tumbling waves, resembling the putridness of it all. Around her neck is the clasp of a necklace her father had forged for her mother, Adeline having gifted it to her, not tolerating the resistance because she harbours all reminders of Cassian Varens. The departure of a necklace will not break her. 

His jaw is frigid, back tense and much of his complexion of youth is lost. Has been lost for the moons past. It’d been in temporary solitude during their stay in Verona, the Venetian knowing the madness of King Aerys and all Targaryens far too well to truly care about honour and duty that had unravelled like an unthreaded tapestry, a meshwork of crimson and gold consuming him rather than ones of pure whiteness that’s as unblemished as the dead and dishonourable. Silence encases them for some moments till Jaime opens his mouth to speak, a softness consuming him like never before, as if he’s afraid of his next words. “There’s things I haven’t told you,” he says somewhat timidly, every word draped in the shame of a thousand cruel gods as he stares back at her with a hybrid of tenderness and fear. 

Secrets are crisscrosses of betrayal and ghosts and yet each and everyone has some sort of deceit that keeps them awake at night. Hers haunts her like a ghost and trails her like a shadow, his face all she sees in the terrors of the night. He isn’t the terror, but all that had happened. She sees his body that’s a meshwork of red thread, the ghastly paleness of his skin devoid of the live that had engulfed him like a tidal wave, all sense of him having ebbed away as he’s reduced to broken rubble and fallen skies. He who’d known everything about her, and she him as they’d been each other’s closest confidants. Now his name is a knell to her ears as she grieves in silence and tears. A severance to last for a lifetime of eternal sorrow, Elena too broken hearted to say his name without weeping. His cheeks grow paler and words lifeless because truly that hour foretold, sorrow to this. In silence she grieves, that her heart could forget, his spirit deceives and she wonders had he always been dearest? To her heart and to her soul because his loss is the one that truly haunts her. Not Elia who she should have perished alongside, not Alyssa whose death had been a reprieve. But the brother who’d held it all, life and love and death and deceit. 

“Then tell me,” she says simply, accustomed to the trepidation that colours her tone though it’s blended with nonchalance. In ways more than one, Elena has placed Jaime on a pedestal that no other man could reach. Perhaps it’s the way he looks at her as if she’s his sun and stars, or that valour that clings to his bones and virtue embedded in his eyes, perhaps it’s because he knows Elena in ways no one ever will and he’s immortalised his touch against hers. Lips and limbs. 

“You said mine is a song of sins and suns,” he begins, voice like plumes of incandescence, like chocolate melting. There’s some slight humour that colours his tone but it’s coated in weariness, handsome features etched in melancholy. Tentatively, he smiles. It’s fleeting, like everything good in this world. It’s not radiant as his smiles usually are, blinding and beautiful. There’s a fear of rejection, as if she’ll deny his warmth and touches as he tenderly intertwines their fingers once more, fitting like a lock and key. Jaime looks like a song, the golden knight who whispers to the stars of faded memories and broken words laced together to form angel kissed melodies of the simplest touch. Eyes of life and love, the personification of the sun because the sun never wilts. 

“You are the Prince of Casterly, and yours is a song of suns and sins,” she recalls. It had been said in the wake of her coming betrothal to Tyrion, the possibility that she’d live a loveless life, the realisation that she’d be subjected to a life under the whims of Lord Tywin’s control, the horror that Tywin Lannister would be her good father. In place of the enigmatic and wonderful Cassian Varens would be a man as hard as the steel he resides on, devours on all that makes mortality from the ashes of stardust and implosions of nebulas to the pieces of distant heavens. The Lannister name is one ridden with the blood of the innocent as they dance with demons of the past, instilling dread like no other. Tywin Lannister is a man of sins and Jaime is a man of suns. ”You are the Princess of Verona, and yours is a song of courage and constellations, you’d said.” He almost grins. 

“Except I’m not a Prince,” he fires back. 

“I could call you my Prince consort,” she replies laughingly. 

“Oh how my father would hate that,” he says with mirth. Now he laughs, lightly, the sound ringing across the halls. 

“Prince Jaime Varens of Verona, it has a nice ring to it.” He certainly looks like royalty as he stands against the balcony, summer and spring and autumn come to life while there’s a winter in both of their hearts. Of snowstorms and avalanches and coldness that penetrates all brittle bones. But this winter they’re gonna win. Let the ice crackle underfoot, for it is nothing as compared to this warm heart and the fire burning within, that steady pilot flame. So, that winter wind with its toothy bite is nothing but excitement because Elena is a child of the north in spite of the sunlight that flows through her veins. There is a warmth that tumbles out in the winter time; when all else is so cold. It radiates from those who love and nurture as easily as they breathe. In truth, the sparks of warmth are always there no matter the season, just like a warm rock blends into a summer beach, yet melts winter ice. 

“Mine is a song of sins.” Elena raises an eyebrow, his sudden change in mood somewhat worrying as his tension is tangible, shoulders stiff and posture rigid as earnestness takes over all the humour of his features that have since evaporated with nothing to show for itself. 

“Don’t be so cryptic.” It comes out harsher than she’d expected, but Jaime takes it in stride with a feeble nod of the head. Now she straightens, as if preparing for some cruel blow that’ll make her insides collapse like all the skies that have fallen. “Tell me.” Words much softer, some of the tension eases and yet it’s still there, thick enough to be cut with a knife. 

“I’d always wanted to honour my mother’s memory,” he begins, resembling the boy who’d knelt and risen from the ashes with a head full of dreams that hadn’t yet manifested themselves into monsters that creep up on him in the worst of times and the best of times because this is an age of folly and wisdom, an era of hope and darkness that dwindles within the shadows. Princesses, from the south and east who’ll grow with vengeance hanging upon their lips, shrouds of red and gold all they’ll ever know, flesh covered with a black veil that will only thicken with time. Two Princesses on different sides of the same coin. A name they share and despise. Daughters of dragons while one breathes dragon fire and the other sunlight. A Prince grows in cold blood, abandoned by all he’d known and loved for a life where assassins will creep up on him like shadows. His will be a tale of tragedy or treachery. Rotting corpses whose questions lay unanswered as they’re reduced to ashes on a barren land, nourishing the saltwater with their essence as their absence carves a hollowness within all they’d known. A void, filled with silence and tears. Two words which hold a lifetime of sorrow. As if Elena’s life had been a glass box, glass shards bleeding her dry only those glass shards are her own heart. Cold hearted monsters who walk their lands with no ounce of empathy, bathing in the blood of the damned and cursing the names of the innocent because while some are born with hearts to break some are born with no heart at all. As is the making of a monster. ”And yet I’ve done the opposite?” 

“The saviour of a wretched city? Your mother’s pride should be seen from the stars.” The Venetian say that ravens are the messengers of the stars, born of duty and honour that’s as ancient as the Varens themselves. Never have they seen creatures of evil who encircle their skies with dark tidings because for so long the raven has been the bearer of blessings. The death of Mad King Aerys II is a blessing regardless of those who reveal their scrutiny with meticulous eyes. The late Lady Joanna would have been watching from the heavens, with Elena’s own father and she’d be proud of the man her son has turned in to. A man of virtue and valour and courage. A man who’d chosen his duty to the common people rather than his duty to a man who’d taken his innocence and his freedom and his joy and his dreams from under his feet. A man who’d chosen vows of knighthood over the vows of the kingsguard. Where honour unravelled, justice prevailed. His name is one that should be painted alongside Sers Barristan Selmy and Arthur Dayne and Gerold Hightower. Men who’d abided tyranny in the name of loyalty. Perhaps another coming of Aemon the Dragonknight. 

“When Cersei and I had been children,” he begins with shame colouring his tone as adoration colours hers, “my mother had moved my chambers to the other side of the Rock.” Casterly Rock is overtly spacious, ranging over the heavens and the hells as demons and angels alike inhabit this antique land. Streams of gold hang from the Sept and the windows to the tapestries and chandeliers because the Lannisters really do shit gold. 

“Cersei,” he starts again, like Dornish red at the back of his throat. His tone is a hybrid of sadness and shame and regret and heartache and sorrow and scorn. His features are etched in a kind of misery and melancholy, flesh paler by the second as Jaime’s unable to meet her gaze which falls from bloom to bloom with his and the silence stretches to infinity. It takes the breath out of her lungs and the warmth in her cheeks, the mirth in her tone and yet the affinity in her eyes is unable to be quenched, unwavering hope alight within her opals of honey and the earth. “She’d often say we’re two halves of one soul. That we’ll die together as we’d been born together.” He allows Elena to reel from his words, revulsion spreading into his brittle bones as rebellion clings to hers of resilience and strength. Elena will never truly know the bounds of the bond shared between twins and yet she and Stefan had been like two halves of one whole. Each other’s partners in crime, their confidants, the beholders of each other’s deepest secrets. But one soul. They’d been two souls in one but never one in two. 

“It was always just us,” he begins. “As a child I’d never been interested in girls because I had swordplay.” Tarik had been much the same so Elena’s yet to hear this sudden realisation. “And her.” And the needle drops. Elena stares to him with an ounce of realisation and she wonders how he can’t hear the beating of his heart because it pounds like drums down her ears. 

“I don’t understand.” Softly, she exhales through her lips and inhales through her nose to calm the ringing of her head. She begs for it not be true. 

“Cersei had been my first love.” He’s unable to meet the intensity of her gaze, eyes focusing on the rippling waves and it hurts. 

“You’re being mean,” she says like she’s starved of air and affection and love. Her lips quiver and her eyes are glazed over. She pulls her hands away from his and holds her chest for stability and security and just something that he can’t give to her. “This isn’t funny.” 

“I wouldn’t lie to you.” His words are earnest and she can only cover her mouth with her hands in disgust. 

“You fucked you sister,” she begins with the venom of a snake dealing every word she utters, “everything you’ve ever said to me is a lie.” She should have known this was too good to be true. Because girls like her don’t soar, they burn. Foolishly, she’d had a semblance of hope that the songs are true. That he is true. And it’s like he’s a statue of glass that bleeds her dry, and she wants to evaporate on the spot with no tragic bloodline to show for herself. 

“I’ve never bedded her, I swear.” And she so wants to believe him because maybe he can still be true. 

“Have you no shame?” she asks like a curse and his gaze falls from bloom to bloom. What about me? 

She brushes off the pain etched on his features. His lips that she knows like the back of her hand, soft in ways words could never be. His hands that have touched her where no one else’s have, his eyes that she’d seen an entire galaxy in. They all crumble like pastries and she feels a semblance of sorrow for him. “I swear on my mother’s tomb I’ve given you my honour.” But the pain in his voice is so raw because Elena knows that he’d never lie on his mother’s name. His words are sincere but they pierce through her chest like a twisted knife. ”It wasn’t love, Elena, it was possession.” The regret is back as he bathes in shame and sorrow and scorn. 

“How could you possibly know that?” she asks lowly, heart still tearing. “When you’re warped and twisted and still everything I wanted.” Her words are harsh, almost cruel but she mustn’t break. Not now. Her features are etched with unshed tears and she wilts. Thankfully, the sun never wilts. 

“In her presence I was spiteful. Nothing more than a Lord’s son who’d wanted to emulate his father. That desire died on your lips because I want to be good, better than my ancestors.” And he traces her lips with the thumb of his sword hand and she sucks in a breath, still loose under his touch. “The golden knight who’s worthy of your hand. The man they sing songs of. That you sing songs of.” His voice is so delicately low, and Elena almost relents because his voice is like velvet and raspberry tarts but she can’t. 

“You’re still Jaime but how can I look at you the same when your proposal was born of pity?” It physically aches her to think that. “Knowing you’d desired another woman’s touch? Much less your own sister.” Disgust clings to her and Elena wants to rid herself of it but she can’t. 

First, Jaime takes in a breath and then he speaks with the words of all the dead lovers of the world. All the fallen poets. “Uncle Gerion had said she’s the worst of my mother and the best of my father while I’m the opposite. And that isn’t a statement to pride yourself on. She burnt me but you made me whole again. The memory of her had evaporated long ago, your touch the only one I’d desired. Once I thought myself broken because who looks at their sister that way? I’d offer to marry her, in Essos, but power has always been her craving. Now I thank the heavens she’d rejected me. Because I want to marry you, Elena, fuck the gods and Cersei and my father because my mother would approve of you. Perhaps I’ve always been a romantic but you make me want to write songs even when words rearrange themselves like broken bridges that just break further. Jaime Varens, Prince consort of Verona. We’ll run to the ends of the world, to the waterfall, the forest, the Godswood, anywhere. Because I want you and only you. Not my father’s stupid legacy. I choose you.” His hands clasp over hers and she lets him, squeezing it. “I chose you when I burnt my white cloak. I’ll choose you again and again if you ask me to. Only you. I’ll be a good husband, Elena, I’ll protect your heart.” And she believes him. “That’s a vow I don’t intend to break.” She kisses him like she’s been starved of air and affection and love, hungry for all his lips can give her because the bestow warmth and wanting upon her. They remind of the home she’s lost because he’s still Jaime. She can’t just shun him because he’s shown her the world she’s closed her eyes to so their lips meld because they fit together. Her beats louder and faster, and their breaths become one as they’re flush against each other, not stopping for air. 

But more skies will fall. 

And then they’re back in the Great Hall where the mood has since brightened. Tarik is now embroiled in a dance with Cersei, false smiles painted on their faces while Amara and Tyrion whirl about. Oberyn and her mother coo over baby Rosa, who should be in a fitful slumber within the nursery but, naturally, Oberyn has little trust that the confines would keep his niece safe. Lights hang from the walls, a golden hue set amongst the hall while even more streams of gold hang from every available crevice. Jaime’s father has already gone all out on expenses despite his hatred for her and so Elena can only wonder how the wedding decor will pan out. 

Having never been a faithful follower of the seven, the Princess would much rather an intimate ceremony before the heart tree in spite of her wavering belief. The Godswood inspires a divine intimacy that the Sept will never instil into her. It’s eeriness is the ancient roots that have been planted for centuries past, carved faces the true protectors of the realm because Tywin Lannister has tried to immortalise himself and he may well have done that but he is not god made flesh. The south is absent of such preservation as fire gods and water gods, star gods and the seven loiter the halls of unnamed men. They’re shielded from the wards of the old gods and for that Elena feels a sense of loss she’ll allow herself to mourn because the old gods are a part of her. One unable to be rooted out. 

It goes deeper than faith because she’d bled and burnt in the lands they call their home. The Godswood of Malgrave Keep is one with icy braziers, snowflakes tumbling from the heavens and onto the warped branches as the snow cracks like bones underfoot. A primal feeling is unleashed, of kings and queens who’d sat at the very grove her father had all but devoted his life to. Where Alyssa had sat with unwavering faith. Where Stefan had sat out of sheer wonder. The heart tree is a twisted Weirwood with its roots firmly embedded into the canvas of snowfall, the carved faces often the faces of her nightmares because they now weep with the blood of her kin. Faces of ravens are engraved onto the trunks, almost lifelike. There’s three groves, a rare phenomenon that Stefan would draw with melancholy. Because he was a godless boy. 

The Godswood of Casterly Rock is not so awe inspiring yet there’s shrouds of home that falls into the great oak that centres the garden. It’s a cave within the mountain called the Stone Garden, its tangled roots having filled the cave so that any other growth is shirked. In many ways it inspires dread like its masters because while northern territories have Godswoods of feeling rather than show, there’s something strangely beautiful about it all. This one is haunting with nothing to show for it. And still it isn’t a shroud of crimson and gold. 

The morrows will soon pass and dawn will arise with splintering heat and skies that bleed orange as the blackness that had engulfed all known life will become naught but a vivid daydream she’ll drown herself in. A promise will be sealed with a kiss and vows will be said because another vow had been forsaken and perhaps Elena is the source Jaime’s dishonour and now she’s drunk on dismay for the boy who’d given it all. Theirs is a rendezvous of forbidden fruit, the golden knight who’d embedded his claws into the foreign princess as a dead desire to be loved has risen from the plumes of tenebrosity. No longer is he the boy who’d knelt and she the girl who’d sang because theirs is a song of sins and suns and courage and constellations and treachery and tragedy. Oh how the bards will sing as the dead lovers of the world weep as their ashes meld alongside each other’s and wreck death and destruction and damnation upon the cursed because the gods hate what they can’t have and perhaps all they desire is bleeding hearts and shattered vows. One heart, one soul, one flesh. Now and forever. 

Now and forever. 

In preparation Elena stitches black and turquoise thread together, a meshwork of her house colours as hers is a shroud of crimson and gold. It will be of Dornish attire, with a plunging neckline while her waist is bared for all too see. Golden thread will embroider the edges, the seams of all she’s known and loved as her own heart. Lord Tywin had been wroth upon revelation, deeming her a barbarian for the slither of flesh that’ll be revealed as if his daughter’s ample breasts hadn’t been unveiled during her own wedding. 

Till death do us part. 

Why must the tethering of their souls be sealed through such words? she often muses. Now and forever should be where the lines are drawn because she is his as he is hers now and forever. Never has she desired another man’s touch, nor has she known anyone else’s lips against hers but he has and it slaps her like glass shards. 

Disgraced, they call her. As if her mortality hadn’t unravelled like a tapestry before her own eyes as she’d watched with cravenness as her innocence had been taken from her. As she’d prodded on glass shards, mindful of the dead who’d surrounded her battered body with naught to show for themselves because Elia and Rhaenys and Aegon are now naught but ashes. And the third babe whose name Elena isn’t even privilege to. The child of a common woman, they must have been, one who’d lost her husband to the war because never will damnation affect anyone more than the smallfolk who live on breadcrumbs. No, her husband had just been someone else’s son because this is a world of injustice and wrongness and her soul is putrid and weeping with sorrow for what she’s unable to give. 

That babe was just someone else’s child. 

Platters of food are served, ranging from roasted meat to grilled fish. Noble (wicked) men and women fill the seats with an irksome desire to garner the attention of the Lord of Lannister because Jaime is an eligible bachelor indeed, far too eligible to be wedded to the soiled princess whose bounty is one of blood and bones. 

Beauty is a fickle thing for too many noble (wicked) men and women enthral themselves within the words of poets and bards. Dreamers who don’t see beauty as the sight of the beholder because they care not about beauty that is skin deep. They see a boy with tufts of golden hair that gleams like cooper, emerald eyes nothing but an accentuation of the comeliness he holds so dearly. They don’t see that Jaime’s a lion with claws, that the blood of heroes past flows in his veins, like conquest. The boy who’d knelt to his father’s desires is long since gone, no longer will he be a pawn in the game of a higher power, cruel and callous. He will be the maker of his own fate, damn those who stand in his way. 

Of the women of high birth surrounding Elena, the Princess believes Lord Tywin to have desired a betrothal between the golden son and Janna Tyrell, infamous for her beauty and crude tongue. Because where the Northerners had forged an alliance as strong as steel with the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and the Vale, the Westerlands have no such backing. Dorne is reclusive now, in the works of a rebellion whose seeds have already been planted for they will be paid their dues. Because the sun never wilts. Meanwhile the Reach had been Rhaegar’s only true allies. The shame of fighting on the wrong side of the war hangs over their heads like an unraveling tapestry. An alliance between the two scorned kingdoms could well be momentous due to the sheer wealth that would be connected. Moreover, Lord Tywin would have his own power within the flower lands should another rebellion occur. Now, he has ties to a sovereign kingdom whose reign is ancient and bowed upon and yet the Venetian look to him with meticulous eyes as they’re drunk on disdain. Normally, he’d have further ties to Dorne had he not commanded the murders of Elia and her children. Moreover, Elena may be naught more than Lady Lannister but she’s grown shrewd under the watchful eye of Aerys, calculating and cold. Never will the Venetian be with him but Jaime for he had saved his lady love as the bards song. 

Because the song must be sung. 

And the raven never runs. 

And then Jaime rises from his seat at the high table, lips still somewhat flushed and hair tangled in knots as her fingers had woven strands within each other. Like a crisscross of strong bronze and molten gold. Emeralds and rubies. “I thank you all for attending.” His voice is shrouded in cold and false courtesies as cordiality is a must in the presence of ones so fine as good king (bastard king) Robert Baratheon and her own brother who grimaces at tangible disdain his tone eludes. Jaime has grown just as she has, but in much different circumstances. No longer is he a green boy and yet he’s still foreign to the concept of politics because Jaime cates for himself and those he loves. Nothing more and nothing less. Fight and fuck, as his motto may well be. 

For a certain moment his glance lingers on Cersei. Not so long to make his previous affections the point of gossip but not so short that Elena feigns ignorance. His defences intensify, the hardened look in his eyes one that resembles the stone his father is carved from. Resentment is etched on his handsome features, for reasons she knows not. His previous words to her had been sincere, she knows, and yet the mere glance between the golden twins causes the shrivelling of her insides as disgust clings to her as she clings to wreckage. 

Jaime’s sister looks to her as if she’s naught more than the dirt at the back of her shoe. Nothing more than a wench who’d stolen her beloved brother from under her without so much as the blink of an eye. Possession, Jaime had said, for she’d coerced him into enlisting in the kingsguard who are enslaved by truth. Like her, her betrothed had been the subject of a joyless life due to an entity who’d had little power in her own right. Does he resent Cersei? Elena wonders because she certainly blames Lyanna Stark. Because Rhaegar had been a madman from the first day she’d met him and the northern rose is depicted as a lovestruck girl who hadn’t bled a realm for her foolish desires. Elena curses them both, loud enough for Tarik and Oberyn to direct wry glances towards her because they understand. But not in the way they should. 

“Elena and I understand how tiresome your journey must have been.” He sounds bored and she stifles laughter at the pointed glare of his father. And then Jaime implores Elena to rise on her own accord. Within his grasp is a circlet silver and gold. A crystal stands centrepiece within an elven focal, encircled with strands of gold that interlink to form swirls adorned with much smaller jewels. The centre is an intricate piecing of patchwork and crowns, the beauty visible from miles away. Through the corner of her eye Elena is able to see his twin visibly bristle and then it dawns on her. This is Lady Joanna’s circlet, the one to be worn by all Ladies of the Rock. And he places it atop her head, delicately, and she’s unsure of whether he believes she or the circlet will break. 

It’s like the stuff of songs. 

Because the song must be sung. 

✧───✧───✧

‘Tis the morrow before the upcoming nuptials, more and more guests flooding into the Lion’s Gate with false courtesies hanging off their lips. Summer comes fast, as music turns up to full volume. The sky blazes blue and the sun is a celebration of yellow, free and bright. The trees rise to the occasion, donning their best verdant hues, and everywhere are the flowers, the scattered rainbow that they are. The birdsong drifts as well as any summertime pollen. It comes as magical as any flute, as improvised as deep south jazz, and as soulful as love's kiss. In that moment she’s too blissfully present, feet still and heart closed because gone are the days of wintry light kissing coldly upon her face, in those blustery days the great golden orb above is too friendly. When uncovered by snow or sleet laden cloud it gave colour to the day, finding any glint of greenness left in the world. When spring had come its brilliant rays shone not just brightly, but with a touch of warmth, a promise of the growing seasons to come. Now in the heady heat of the coming summer, they walk on the tinder of the forest floor, dreading the moment they must leave its dense protective canopy and walk the last mile beneath the unrelenting sun. The world is painted vivid by its rays, like a new painting with still wet oils. No longer is it gently warming their bodies, bringing life back to cold muscles; now it burns unprotected skin in minutes. 

Embedded between Tarik and Amara, who sit beside Cersei and Robert within the royal box, and the Starks whose sombreness clings to them like black veils that shroud their flesh. A tension lies between them, of unspoken breakdowns of vows and the affects of war that have discriminated against none as the fiery embers of death and damnation eat at them all. Because war is a crisscross of visitors and loss, a paradox of healing and pain, a contradiction of death and life. It’s naught but a three lettered word that puts those within its confines into a glass box that slowly caves in on them as the magnification of it only rises for the gods have never cared for a million dead children no less one dead child whose absence is rung through halls and passages, sorrow etched into the stars. 

The false knights of the kingsguard rise, their white cloaks blemished with dishonour as they stand alongside each other in hopes of unsung glory. The deaths of Arthur Dayne, Gerold Hightower, Oswell Whent, Jonothor Darry as well as her uncle Lewyn has seen a scarce reduction of the famed knights as only Ser Barristan Selmy of the original seven remains. His features are etched in loss that creeps up on him like a shadow, every line on his face of anguish and agony as his devotion falls to futile floors now naught but sworn to Robert Baratheon, the man who’d taken it all, his shattered affections like glass at his feet. 

In passing, Jaime had spoken to her in length of his admiration for the Bold, much of that reverence still seeded for he’d done naught but his duty as the three of the tower had done naught but guard a girl brutalised as their kinsman were dying for a cause larger than themselves. We’d always been the lowest of the seven, Jaime had said crestfallenly, words still draped in adoration for the man he’d sought to become, now only glaring at him with contempt for vows had been broken and new vows sealed. 

Sers Mandon Moore and Preston Greenfield, Boros Blount Meryn Trant garment the white cloak, having been enlisted into the kingsguard almost immediately. Known not for their valour as kingsguard past or their unwavering loyalty for the former is a man of few words while the latter wears corruption like a crown. Their fighting prowess not renowned nor feared, the sworn brotherhood of knights sworn to defend their king from any and every threat dwindles in legend as men of ordinary beginnings and ending say the words that will subject them to a loveless life. 

Aerys’ kingsguard had been one famed and feared, renowned and known, theirs a song of suns and stars while all the skies have since fallen. Ser Arthur Dayne, a mourning sword whose white cloak had been as unblemished as his honour for he’d done his duty till his demise, however foul is duty had been and so the song must be sung. Gerold Hightower, ancient and old yet deadly nonetheless. Of brute strength and raw skill, his legend is one told in myths of the old as the deceased Lord Commander withers underneath the sodden earth. Barristan Selmy, possessing all the strength of his predecessors as he’d been the most honourable of them all. A man of honour who’d abided tyranny till the very end. Oswell Whent, a man of jests whose battles had been a crisscross of dry humour and blade against blade. Elena had liked him the most, never swaying away from the ultimate truth. Jonothor Darry, infamous for his place as Rhaegar’s dog as Ser Arthur had been. Lewyn Martell, having enlisted for the safety of his niece who now rots alongside him. Theirs is a shroud of crimson and gold, red and black. And Jaime Lannister, whose duty have unravelled like a thinning thread as justice had prevailed, the veil of virtue hanging over him like a tapestry. Men revered and respected, able to ward off an army with a hand while the other lay dormant. 

They’d been of fire and blood. The glowing embers leaped and twirled in a firery dance, twinkling like stars in the hot swirling air before cascading to earth like gleeful fire fiends, setting alight the tinder dry forest of the coming war. The fire had dreamt in its iron bed, cozy in the metal that glows. Her flames had transformed the legends into the most transient of beauties, hot ribbons of light. There were times it’d spark, as if it wanted more than one crazy way to dance, as if it needed to leap, to fly, willing to land where it may. And in its place all that’s left is unclenching mud, kindred souls naught but ashes on a barren land as the ghosts of the dead had been slain in protection of a dynasty. Blood had been reaped and lives lost, as is the unsung song of the valiant. 

Tourney knight such as Yohn Royce and Jason Mallister, Thoros of Myr and Jorah Mormont sit atop their mounts in hopes of subsiding glory, expressions hardened as they look on to the cerulean blue of the sky. And then Jaime rides up, looking every inch a god made flesh as his tufts of golden hair are luminescence made flesh, emerald opals glistening like wildfire that dances with delirium and dismay. His handsome features are etched in determination as the fawning arises like flickering flames, wearing Elena’s favour of a black ribbon tied around his wrist while eager to put his judges to the test. Garmented in golden armour, Jaime almost looks out of place. Ethereal. Otherworldly. A beauty of the cosmos not known to man. Stars who weep a blanket of rainfall as their lover had been lost. The heavens who rage with petulant fury, beams thundering like quakes to shake the earth. He is painted in the most florescent colors. The pallet the gods had used to create him inciting the dead artists of the world to weep with sorrow. When he smiles, rays of colors from every end of the spectrum go running in all directions, looking for an untouched canvas on which to leave a mark. With a simple brush of the arm, one could be left with an unmistakable smear of chartreuse. Instead of being the subject of their arts, he becomes it. He doesn’t need a paintbrush, for he uses his own fingertips to draw the colors of life. When dawn is on the horizon, he awaits the sunrise to radiate off of him and project to the world because his is a song of sins and suns. 

One: Jaime’s mare gallops into the world beyond as the golden knight unhorses all who’d dare challenge him, shattering their pursuits of glory for an unending dream that makes him smile in the plumes of darkness bestowed upon him. The final challenge is against Ser Barristan, the affirmation of Jaime’s deeds clear on his face for he wears scorn and contempt like a brittle crown that burns into his flesh and renders him a virtueless man. Of vice and cowardice. One tilt, two tilt, three tilt four. Ser Jaime unseats the man who’d been his mentor as melancholy seeps itself into his bloodstream and bleeds him dry. Jaime Lannister wins, all false knights be damned. 

Two: a garland of opium poppies is placed into his cold grasp, the white petals kissing the summer air, flexible enough to move in the breeze yet rooted firmly into his fingers. These flowers that grow where Elena dwells with awful gods, these tenacious blossoms of the city streets, born to take whatever comes their way and make beauty of it, she admires them. It is as if they call for some trees to accompany them, to make the city streets brighter, to refresh the air that sinner and saint breathe in alike. There are times she feels that they are nature's graffiti, that chaotic rebellious element cheering on noble (wicked) men and common women alike because imperfection is an art we’ve all perfected the dead be damned. . 

Three: the fawning arises as noble and common ladies alike place their fantasies in the higher power’s, longing for Ser Jaime to lose all slither of honour and replicate the events of the famed Tourney of Harrenhal in which a dynasty had dismembered that night, the embers of the fallen flame naught but a call for death. They long for a hollow crown and brittle bones. 

Four: Jaime directs his stead towards Elena, dreams shattering like glass his mar treads upon with the care of a thousand and one cruel gods. An eternity of waiting as the horse trots further into an abyss of unknowingness, as crude whispers arise from the previous silence. Words enlaced with hatred and hunger, desire and disdain, longing and desire that leaves them drunk on dismay for theirs is a tryst of passion unable to be broken by the gods themselves for the dead lovers of the world weep in sorrow for all they’ve lost. And Jaime Lannister is not a god, only a man. Elena Varens is not a poet, only a woman. 

Five: Jaime rises, features etched in the expression of a lovestruck man enthralled and bewitched for theirs is a rendezvous of ardent longing as her ebony ringlets cascade like waves of the saltwater they’ve lost themselves in, a small smile saved for him and only him as Elena is able to see Ned stiffen at the corner of her eye, Cersei glaring daggers. “Wife,” he drawls out with that lazy grin that makes ladies swoon like no other. He delicately emplaces the the crown of opium poppies atop her tresses, Elena rising and beckoning him into an unchaste kiss as the simpering boils her blood. Their lips meld in a dance of tongues that they each enjoy, his hands crumpled into her waist as her fingers play with the strands of his hair. And the world ebbs away for theirs is a tryst of passion. 

Six: the smiles bloom and the whispers die. 

That night, Elena dreams of stars that bleed and burn, dust emblazoned on the barren lands like ashes of a hollow soul burnt through as it becomes what the world had asked if it. Silver sequins of a dying flame like embers of dragon fire falling into an abyss of nothingness as the hollowness beyond swallows it up, the skies a haze of bleeding orange atop cerulean heavens where puffs of white magic loiter across the unseen constellations like the lovers of midnight who’d been severed by entities unknown, half broken hearted as their reunion had been a tryst of silence and tears where the cold wind had blown like a thundering war horn against blankets of rainfall and beams of sunshine that fall upon deaf ears because all we are are implosions of nebulas with a dead desire to be loved, god’s’ tears drowning us as we’re unable to stand against the storm because our demons can swim, water spirits whose lungs are as beaten and bruised as them all. 

Roused from her fitful slumber of stars and suns by the cosmos who’ll weep as two souls are tethered in matrimony, Elena garments herself in the Dornish gown of turquoise and black, interwoven silk and thread forming one created by the gods themselves, of the most fluorescent colours as her Ladies swarm her, gushing over the beauty that embraces her as death had once done, how Ser Jaime will be speechless as theirs is a song of fidelity and faith. Jaime Lannister and Elena Varens, the songs will be false. 

Elena loathes the constant swarming, the concept of Ladies foreign within the plumes of the northern regions as they smother her with flushed cheeks and voices dripped in the honey of a thousand bees. They dance around her, a flurry of pink and blue and yellow as the maids insist on brushing through her tresses, an act she’s always enjoyed for the peace it incites. Thankfully, her mother soon arrives with Amara who remove all external forces as the trio are left to their own devices. 

Able to see her reflection through the vanity in peace, Elena outlines the embroidered flowers encircled with jewels of gold and silver, luxury seeping into the silk. They’re of a lighter hue of turquoise to the blouse itself, resembling the Sunset Sea when she let her rays cascade onto the world, bringing the scene into full view, adjusting the brightness and contrast. The neckline is of thin velvet that falls into the shape of a heart, plunging to the nape of her breasts, chest amplified. Much of her sleeves are a stream of her house colours, yet the edges resemble the main pattern that adorns the front, outlined with silver thread. The bottom of the blouse is a meshwork of black and gold, interweaving in swirls and sparkles, clasped with bells. It adorns her figure, the slight show of her stomach on display while the skirt is yet another river of the turquoise Elena bleeds. The stitched flowers rise up to her legs, of the colours of her heart. The bottom is an embroidering of intricate patterns while jewels adorn the lace, sequins gleaming like copper during rainfall, outlined with traces of black thread as she’s rendered a goddess of the flesh. Cascading like waves, ebony ringlets are brushed out naturally while the headpiece Jaime had gifted her is nestled within her locks. The necklace gifted by her mother is clasped around her neck, the marking of a stagnant livelihood while a bracelet adorns her wrist, silver and gold like the sun and moon. It had been Alyssa’s. Finally, her earrings are of black that resembles the darkness of the night the Sunset Sea had been engulfed with blackness, Blackwater Bay with bleakness in a hoop shape. 

Similarly, her mother is donned in Dornish attire as she bleeds orange and yellow, intricate suns woven into her gown. Amara, meanwhile, is garmented in a traditional gown designed in the Reach, having found these particular gowns to free her blood flow as her stomach only enlarges, constricted within the confines of Dornish and Venetian silk thread. Sleeveless and backless, of blue and pink, Elena’s good sister looks as if spring had come to life. 

They talk, of the days that lie ahead and the days of her past, of the lives lost and battles won, of the names named and bonds forged. The dreaded topic is of the bedding, her mother and good sister alike warning her against indulging herself in possible desires for the pain will be palpable, each somewhat fearful of the true nature of Jaime because there’s no art to find the mind’s construction on the face for false face will hide what false heart must know. What remains unknown to the public eye, though wisps of whispers have since spread like wildfire, is that Jaime and Elena have shared the same chambers most nights, the Princess most weary of the Rock and its inhabitants as she’d been met with meticulous eyes and scrutiny. Backs to each other, the tension eases. 

Knowing smiles cloud her vision as Tarik suddenly bursts in, eyes warm as he embraces her tenderly, the tendril of a teardrop falling onto her strands of hair. She’s safe and secure within his arms, unwilling to let go till her mother gently pries her away and theirs is an embrace much harder because Adeline Varens has already lost three children who now soar with the stars, on the brink of losing another and Elena makes a silent promise to visit often because she’s unable to bear the thought of breaking this promise. So the words will forever invade her thoughts because Casterly Rock may be her seat but Malgrave Keep is her home. 

When the thin veil of moonlight descends upon the tides of daybreak like the curtains of dawn rebirthing the coming night, Elena’s name will be painted in crimson and gold forevermore as a promise to be kept escapes her plump lips, a shroud of sins and suns as a dead desire to be loved arises like smoke and ashes to render Westeros a burning trail of charred remains as the sun and stars break all the skies, falling atop the shoulders of the damned. Meanwhile the sky bleeds the entails of a blazing fire, a myriad of orange and yellow engulfing the tapestry that inspires the warmth of a thousand poets, the moon lurking behind puffs of white magic as the world ebbs away like naught more than a wishing well. Without a word to be said the Princess is escorted out of the sealed chambers by Tarik who wears the ghost of a sly grin, Amara and her mother smiling earnestly as she takes her leave in a shroud of blue and black that illuminates the golden fleck of her eyes. 

Simmering silence is the answer to the many queries that escape her bloodstained lips, tightly strained grins and lingering reassurance that somehow uneases her more than offering comfort she’d grasp on to like a lifeline. Only now is she able to take notice of the maiden’s cloak that lies within the grip of her brother who must have taken it when reverie had encased her. A pointed look he receives and Elena’s bestowed with the clasping of the cloak. A shroud of black and blue. 

Having left the main entryway of the Rock, the pair are surrounded by naught but humid air that nips at her exposed flesh, the absence of snowflakes melting in her hair one she sorely misses as the ice that shields her heart melts under the burning gazes of the gods who watch her strife with glee. 

Lead towards the cave, Elena outlines the Stone Garden. Twisted roots dig into the sodden earth, like crisscrosses of light and darkness because this is a place of beauty and ugliness simultaneously as the Weirwood is one so large that all other growth is shirked, a primal feeling unleashed within these tombs and yet haunting nonetheless because this grove had been abandoned centuries past, the blood of its conquerors stained onto the bark. Southron strongholds often care for the showings of these gardens more than the significance. Full of birds and flowers, they often consist of tall redwoods and old elms overlooking streams to draw on the hidden wonders of it all. The Godswood of Casterly Rock has no such notions attached to it, all sense of homeliness lost to the ages and yet here it is. The red leaves swarm the entryways, clouding her vision with everything good and everything bad, having always hated the colour red. The slender figure of the heart tree is engraved with a marking of the tree gods, perhaps the only assurance Elena has that they care because they no longer look so sad as they had done. 

She looks to Tarik in earnest and he nods lightly, edging her closer as they take amble steps towards the centre of it all where Jaime is dressed in a light variation of his house colours, green eyes illuminated from miles away. Like emeralds and the earth and nature and spring and summer. By his side is Tyrion, grinning manically as Gerion Lannister sits beside him while the figure of Oberyn is a looming presence right before the showing of the gods. By his side is her mother and Amara, Rosa toying between them. Elena smiles. Ned and his wife stand, their twins within their grasp as the former offers the Princess the wisp of a smile and she returns it, tired of old hostilities. And her heart wrenches in love, because this is always how she’d always imagined her nuptials to take place, love for Jaime and the family she has left and the family she’s lost. Perhaps her shroud isn’t one of crimson and gold. 

“Who comes before the gods this night?” Oberyn’s softly spoken voice echoes around the cave and breaks the silence of the Godswood, Elena happily in the claws of reality. 

Her nerves ease as her brother speaks. “Princess Elena of House Varens comes to be wed, a noblewoman, trueborn and flowered, she comes to beg the blessing of the gods. Who claims her?” She and Jaime lock eyes, a promise. 

Standing beneath the boughs of the heart tree, her betrothed stakes his claim with a paradox of firmness and tenderness only meant for her. “I do. Jaime, of House Lannister. Heir to Casterly Rock and Warden of the West. Who gives her?” 

“I, Tarik of House Varens, King of Verona and Lord of Malgrave Keep.” His words are like harsh steel, a warning and yet a blessing at the same time. Arm in arm, they make their way to the sacred tree where Jaime awaits his bride. “Elena, do you take this man?” Much softer, it’s a silent promise. Say no and we’ll run without ever looking back. 

“I do,” she answers without the lingering resistance they’d once been made of, firm assurance colouring her tone. 

“Jaime, do you take this woman?” Oberyn asks. 

“I do.” 

Tarik lets go of her, entrusting her to the protection of her new husband who returns the gesture by unfastening the clasp of her maiden’s cloak beneath her chin. The garment falls away easily, cool air returned to her limbs and for a moment she is nameless. Houseless. Would she be happy if she would evaporate on the spot and materialize somewhere else with no name and no tragic bloodline? Elena closes her eyes and imagines Alyssa in her spot. Where her sister went, the Princess may well follow. Then Jaime cloaks her, and Elena pledges her troth. She is his, and he is hers, from this day to their last. He kisses her with soft lips and sweet nothings. And theirs is union born of harrowing truths, severed by the toil of life. 

And they’re left in their solitude, warmth now welcomed into her brittle bones as she nestles into him like a blanket. He places a chaste kiss to her temple, words soft in ways his kisses could never be. “We can avoid the Sept if you’d like,” and she chuckles, “now that we’re man and wife.” The scent of his doublet is instilled into her as he laces his hands in the tendrils of her hair, pulling her closer, her arms wrapped around his waist, cheeks flush against his shoulders. 

“Find some poor wench to marry your father for all the gold spent,” she replies lightly, devoid of weariness and indulging in the peace she feels. Streams of gold fall from the chandeliers and the windows, the wealth of House Lannister on full display as Jaime’s father had spared no expanse in his golden son’s wedding. Courtiers and jesters and dancers and singers roam the halls, false courtesies on their lips and greed embedded into their eyes as everything is placed under their scrutiny. 

He grins. “As your Prince consort I can only oblige to your whims,” he replies without a moment of hesitation, twirling strands of her hair around his fingers, “dearest wife.” The word rolls off of his tongue devilishly, dancing with sin and the mundane pleasures of man as all ounce of nervousness dissipates into the air that shrouds the newly married couple. 

“Poor woman wouldn’t last a day,” she muses. 

“I fear she’d jump off the cliffs,” Jaime jests in response and Elena feels limp, silence her chosen voice as red clouds her vision. Her husband is weary of the damning quietness and Elena can feel his eyes penetrate into the back of her skull with unanswered questions while she nestles herself further into him. “Elena?” he asks hoarsely, voice loud enough to bounce around the walls of the cave but quiet enough that it rings down her ears like a plea for help. 

“I visited the cliffs,” she finally says with tranquility as she recalls the serenity of the Sunset Sea that night, engulfed by blackness and shining with the light of the stars and moon combined. Like a song. “They were beautiful,” she continues earnestly, unable to shake off the eerie sense of calamity that had washed over her like a tidal wave. 

And before he can say anything further Elena pries herself from his embrace to face him, forcibly slamming him into the bark of the heart tree. One wouldn’t think a woman of her statue to be able to do so with such force and yet Jaime lets her, hands gripping the slope of her waist as he pulls her closer. And the lingering resistance returns, Jaime touching her with the tenderness of a thousand love songs. The swirl of emotion she feels from one brush of their lips burns her. Lust and desire. However, before she can ponder about it further, he pulls her to him and covers her lips with his in a hungry kiss. As their mouths are hot against each other, Elena feels like she’s walking on air. It’s magic, the way his lips connect with hers like a lock and key. His mouth is warm, the caress of his lips softer than she could have ever imagined and she opens her mouth with a low moan that he swallows up. 

Tentatively, he switches their places so that the pointed edges of the tree stump mount against her flesh as her cheeks flush for him, not allowing him one moment of respite. Now does Elena forsake the words of the poets for all she wants is piercing sensuality and passion, no care for tenderness as his teeth graze the crevice of her neck with reverence, the Princess clawing on his golden curls. An entanglement of molten gold and delicate porcelain, his rhythm soon quickens as he takes her to a state of ecstasy, craving naught more than the piercing bruise of his touch even as they lie together as man and wife for what will not be the last time. But this is the first time and so she’ll remember the way she’d blossomed underneath him, gold, gold, gold clouding her vision. 

The wedding in the Sept is much less intimate, noble (wicked) men and women sat before the seven who glare ominously. As well as warmth from their tryst a certain humour seeps itself into her as she reaches the dais where Jaime stands, humour of his own etched on his handsome features as they all witness the matrimony of an already wedded couple. Under the flush of the stars, within the intimacy of the Godswood, against the wishes of his father who’d said it would make them look weak. Thankfully, her darling dearest has never cared for duty. Thought the results had caused a wave of shock to consume her, now she’s thankful for the gazes of the wicked unnerve her like the blueberry tarts she hates so. 

To calm herself, prissy southron ponce accidentally escapes her lips as their vows are said, Jaime’s father glaring furiously at his would be good daughter who almost blushes. Thankfully, Jaime is able to defuse the situation as he returns the thinly veiled insult with sadistic snow bitch, the corners of his lips tugging up as she’s unable to help the fit of laughter that encases her, attempting to stifle it with her hand but failing thoroughly. Robert Baratheon guffaws loudly in response, reminiscing over the wilderness and lack of propriety that had clung to the bones of his darling Lyanna, his wife silencing him with a stony glare that instills a sense of dread within the entire Sept as the Lannister woman almost leaves till a look from her father silences her. Ned’s features contort into an unreadable expression as he eyes his friend wearily, as if under his scrutiny. Thoughts swirl through her head, thought she ignores because the flow of her blood is one so loud she wonders how Jaime is unable to hear it. 

And then they’re wedded for the second time as he wraps the Lannister cloak around her, her scent of the seawater firmly embedded into it as it claims her for only the second time. A chaste kiss seals their vows, the pledge to love forevermore engraved into her very bones because she isn’t yet stuck between the sweetness and the sourness of her veins. 

The Great Hall is illuminated with with flowers and rivers of golf, lavender hanging from the walls to display the wealth at hand. Elena and Jaime sit central on the high table alongside the respective royalty on each side of them, the latter half deafeningly silent as a serving wench is the poor bearer of Robert’s affections. Mindless chatter fills the hall, Elena and Jaime oft conversing with the right half over the sights they hope to see within the freedom of Essos. The Long Bridge and floating canals, the river Rhoyne and the Titan of Braavos. And most importantly the shadow lands of Asshai, Tyrion gleeful at the prospect of sighting live dragons as he’ll be joining their journey, much to his father’s approval. 

Jaime is a more than capable dancer, guiding Elena as dogs do men as she’s utterly hopeless, prodding on his toes as he merely chuckles. She twirls into the arms of Oberyn, then Tarik, then Tyrion. And then Ned who wishes her eternal happiness. 

The feast is far merrier than the ceremony itself as many had been fearful to ire the Lord whose name is sung with trepidation, choosing to ignore the sight of his eldest and now good daughter indulge themselves in impropriety. All the high lords in the land and their major vassals have come to see the eldest Lannister Prince wed. Elena is hesitant to accept homage from her wedding guests, dancing cold dances with Lords from all over the realm, and lets the children fill her plate from the banquet. Lady Catelyn comes to wish for happiness and health, and Elena gives her the same with a warm expression. The new Lady of Winterfell is much melancholic, eyeing her husband through visions of contempt as she clings to the security of her babes who toddler ahead of her, a stark difference to each other. And so Elena is sure to converse with the Tully woman for some time, praising the beauty her daughter already radiates and the chivalry her son will no doubt possess. 

Lady Catelyn despairs, believing Ned to drown his bitterness in mundane pleasures as his dear friend has a habit of. She strikes Elena as a woman who’d wholly believed in the songs. The Princess had not, for all her dreams, because history has decreed the song of the stars to be naught more than mummers’ words. Rhaena Targaryen, Naerys Targaryen and Rhaella Targaryen. Royalty whose lineage could not be doubted and yet they’d been naught more than broodmares whose worth was the stake of their husbands no matter the love they bore in their heart nor the resentment that had flowed through their veins nor the greatness that could have been. Alys Harroway and Bethany Bracken who’d been naught more than accessories to the hand of their kings, bodies pillaged and plundered as the whims of man had deemed them defenceless. Rhaenyra Targaryen, claiming the birthright her father had bestowed upon her only to be engulfed by the teeth of a dragon. 

Elia Martell. 

Ashara Dayne. 

Celeste Hightower. 

Elena Varens. 

Girls are born. 

They bleed. 

They burn. 

The gifts are a lavish affair, the unveiling done in the heart of the feast. Gifts from other prominent lords and ladies are presented as well. Mostly jewelry; fine textiles to make clothing from; silverware and porcelain. It’s not so bad, since she enjoys these soft and lovely things. JaimeMs gifts are far more practical. Countless swords to make more Lannister heirlooms; a pair of bred horses from the Starks that match the power of the North with the swiftness of Dorne; hunting gear and weaponry from her siblings siblings; a giant gilded tapestry of the Rock from Lady Catelyn; and Dornish spears from the Martells along with scrolls on proper footwork techniques. 

From Amara alone Elena is gifted a leather-bound book full of poetry; a delicate necklace of alternating sapphires and rubies carved into little suns; and matching silver hair pins. They look like winter suns, and she has Jaime immediately hook on her necklace while she adds her hair combs and pins. They don’t exactly match, but they are lovely, and his hands are warm on her neck and Elena hasn’t smiled this much in a long time. And lastly is a fine tapestry embroidered by her own hand as the needle wounds are apparent. A tapestry of Elena herself overlooking the Sunset Sea from the confines of a window of the Keep that rests deep into the heavens, Jaime by her side. Tarik teases his wife that at long last she’d found gifts worthy and the Dayne woman replies with sickeningly sweet reverence. From Tyrion is the swift model of a ship in Blackwater Bay that will take her to Essos where it shall remain in her possession. It’s called the Moon Chaser and Tyrion says that it’s built to also sail in major rivers; Elena whirls him around the room in thanks. 

From Oberyn and Doran are a set of silver hair combs inlaid with moonstones that had belonged to Elia; gloriously illuminated books about the history of the known worlds; and a goldenheart bow from the Summer Isles Oberyn knows will heighten her curiosity as he swears to teach her. Elena runs her hands over the smooth wood and the book covers and gushes out her thanks. 

Her mother indulges her in portraits of the fallen, the sheer accuracy astounding as every line on her father’s face is much the same as it’d been in life. Alyssa’s raven tresses are pinned up in a braid while Stefan’s features are etched in the thought that had always consumed him, Maksim overlooking the Sunset Sea with childish reverence. Elia is the sun herself, her babes by her side as the stars glisten in awe. Moreover, colours of pastel and neon are placed within her grasp as are the possessions of her sister. Books of Dornish history and wooden gowns all know Elena will cherish. And, finally, the gemstone that had encrusted the crown of her father is placed tentatively within her palm, Elena clutching it so tightly that her nails dig into her flesh, Jaime having to pry her fingers away. She’d almost wept for life, her mother clinging to her as Tarik had holds the crown itself with a new gemstone of ruby that gleams like the suns of Verona. In lights like these is Elena able to see the ghosts of days past on her mother’s face. She much resembles the Princess Loreza, their smile one in the same and in turn her eyes are the same as Elia’s. 

Elena’s father’s eyes had been of a deep hue of brown that had resembled the colours of the earth, gleaming like pennies in the midst of torrential rainfall. Her mother’s is of a golden hue inherited by all Martells, gleaming like diamonds and resembling pools of honey against sunlight. Alyssa and Tarik had been born with those of their father, while Stefan and Maksim had had their mother’s eyes. Elena’s are a crisscross of golden flecks and earthy tones, and it quenches the pain. To be able to look upon herself in the vanity and outline the faces of the fallen is a much needed reprieve as her golden halo breaks like glass. 

Tarik is the last to present his gift. Firstly, he presents Elena with the original copy of Art of the Heart, stating that he’d scoured through their father’s solars into the abyss of the night in hopes of retrieving the long acclaimed book. He hands it to her with a small smile, and part of her wishes to tell him to keep it for herself yet the selfish part relents and indulges in the scent of the Godswood it emits. Next, he gifts the nearly finished draft of A Godless Man, its bronze casing illuminated actual bronze against the lighting as Weirwood leaves entangle the swirled words, Stefan having had a large affinity for bronze trinkets and an unyielding lack of faith. It smells fresh and new, his scent of berries coating the pages and she smiles widely at her fallen brother’s artwork, Stefan having possessed the most of their mother’s natural talent. Elena falls into the arms of Tarik, her brother reaffirming that they are hers and the affirmation of his words is worn on her face like a crown. 

Lastly, he lies a sword on the high table. Much to everyone’s enthralment, the sword is of their father’s Darkheart. Forged from the embers of a rock and the magic that lies in the heart of Verona, they say. Engraved into the pommel is a lion, Tarik’s own hanging by his side as he allows the silence to fester for some moments. “My father’s greatsword was much too large for me to carry,” he begins lightly, uncaring of how weak he may sound to pompous southerners, “therefore I had it melted into three. Mine own is called Honour’s Skewer,” many gape at that, Jaime smiling lightly as he still stares in awe. Ned grimaces. “The second will be gifted to my first son while the third now answers to you.” His next words are unpredictable. “A great sword for a great knight.” His voice is unwavering, revealing his high esteem for Jaime first hand as there’d always been something akin to brotherhood between them. “When conflicted between your vows of knighthood and vows of the kingsguard,” he says with a mixture of shame and anger as he directs an unearthly look to the rival king and Ser Barristan, each looking away slightly, ”your virtue prevailed and knighthood won.” He emphasises the last word with a feeling Elena is unable to make out, voice suddenly hoarse as Jaime drowns him in thanks and admiration and adoration as a sense of awe because never has Jaime been bequeathed with respect since the events of that day. 

Her husband names it Oathkeeper. 

Oh how many oaths he will break. 

Naturally, the bedding is soon called for. The oaf king bellows it to the top of his lungs, guffawing with unfound humour as rowdy men claw by his side. Meanwhile the Ladies that loiter the floors giggle with glee, cheeks flush as they long for their hands to roam the bare flesh of her darling dearest Prince consort. Previously, Elena had never been envious of the courtly attention Jaime had received because he’d never truly been hers. She’d accepted that theirs was a tryst borne of passion but never meant to be as honour and duty had bowed before him, her kisses naught more than a sliver of the truth he could have lived had he met her earlier. Yet now, something feral lies dormant beneath her chest as they fantasise over the Prince of Casterly, eyes roaming from the muscles of his arms to the laces of her breeches. Moreover, the thought of unwelcome hands roaming her flesh instills a terror within her. One she’s never known before as she’s able to identify the thinly veiled lust that clouds their eyes. It makes her feel putrid and repulsed, willing to die rather than allow these beasts one chance to even touch the crevice of her waist. 

And so she unveils the knife she’d hidden into her boots, sheathed with red leather as had been gifted by Oberyn she Tarik alike, each knowing the whims of man. Its blade is curved and sharp, so sharp that it’d draw blood from a mere touch or graze. Her eyes are feral, barking out a threat to even the king who looks murderous while Jaime’s father is outraged as the knife threatens to pierce into the flesh of those who undermine the softness of her womanly heart. Lord Tywin had seen to that. And then Jaime’s own longsword rises, a double edged threat as his words are simple. 

✧───✧───✧

It takes the better part of a moon to sail to Braavos. The Moon Chaser’s compartments are cozy, stocked with many cushions and candles, but Elena is unable to appreciate the luxury that drowns her because the closer they sail to Essos, the louder the river song becomes in her blood, Elia’s voice ringing down her ears like drums of war. Her slumbers are short and dreary as a result, roused in the wake of the night with nothing to show for herself. And during those nights she paces under the moonlight and prays for swifter wind but calm seas and skies as that night floods into her mind. Perhaps she cannot have it both ways, but if she could, she would grow wings and fly immediately to the river with her heart’s desire. 

And so Elena fills the air with stories her father had whispered through the wisps of the wind, recalling the tales of magic he’d indulge himself in. Tyrion takes her panic at face value, but she sees that Jaime worries for her with unsettled glances and weary eyes, Elena unknowing of how to comfort him with words as wrong as rain. When the nightfall descends upon daybreak, when they share a bed as Elena stares at the walls thoughtfully, she makes sure to curl against him, her hair often grazing the crevice of his neck while he twirls then about his fingers like a sweet song. His tension eases as they’re pressed together, the steady thump of his heartbeat ringing down her ears as if she’s a poet. Elena’s reassurances weigh thin on him and yet she doesn’t want him sleepless like she is because the spell of each day’s death is one truly beautiful as it renders her darling dearest peace of body and soul. To comfort herself she’ll stare at him, enthralled in the way his chest falls and rises like a steady pulse, all sense of worry dissipated as she curls further into him, no longer unnerved with the ethereality he possesses. 

A newfound intimacy is found in the plumes of darkness, their lips exploring each part of one another’s body with ravenous desire. It’s so numbing and absolute to have one arm slung over her waist and the other reaching up to tangle his hand in her hair in the midst of the ocean air as she’d dreamed of as a child, knowing naught but the other’s name for theirs is a song of the stars. So warm, so soft, so much electricity sparking up and down her limbs like lightning without thunder. It scares her how much she enjoys it, how easy it could be to lose herself in it to the point that the hollowness fills up. And didn’t Elia lose herself in Rhaegar until he ripped the rug from beneath her feet? As her mother had lost herself in her father only for him to abandon her as she longs for his return in a cloudy embrace? History is never kind to women, and so Elena had vowed to protect her heart in spite of all the dreams she’d had because the Princess is nothing if not cynical but did her husband not make the same oath? History will speak of the way they’d broken each other like a promise, he her salvation and she his demise while he her bane and she his boon. A paradox of healing and pain, every second of every day for theirs is a tale of two lovers who know tragedy to be all the water and fire gods alike weep with. In silence and tears. 

Like a dream come to life, Braavos rises from the silhouette of the horizon. Elena drags poor Tyrion out of his furs so they can watch the shoreline crawl ever closer, counting the seconds. The air is taken out of her lungs as they finally pass beneath the mighty Titan, nothing short of enchanting. It growls, and the growl echoes in the sky that bleeds the tears of fire and across the rippling waves and nonstop in her body. Growling, growling, her body is growling because the river that runs through her bloodstream is so close that she can taste it in the salty air. Jaime squeezes her shoulder and she leans against him to keep her balance, his arms encircling her waist as Tyrion feigns ignorance at their intimacy having lived off it for a lifetime. 

The trio come to the conclusion that they must reside within the manse of the Sealord of Braavos, and Elena knows she must see out these niceties but her body shrieks for the streams of blue. “We’re nearly there,” she mumbles to herself. We’re nearly there; what was one more day compared to a moon? All she must do is be a good princess, sleep in an overstuffed bed with her handsome husband, bide her time and allow the Sealord to bestow a wedding gift upon her and Jaime. She would be most lacking in courtesy to keep an important man such as himself waiting on account of a song no one else can hear like the beating of her heart. As is the will of the gods. 

The warmth of the Moon Chaser is abandoned in favour of a hired boat the colour of rotting silver. Braavos is beautiful. The air no longer rots with human flesh and shit, the seawater rippling into it. Never ending silhouettes of grey stone buildings stretch towards the heavens, and yet every building is unique in its masonry and design. Canals breaking and forming, rearranging themselves like broken ladders opposed to roads designed for the galloping of horses and Elena nestles between Jaime and Tyrion as their hired boat drifts down the canal towards the Sealord’s Palace. Her husband rests his chin on the top of her head, as if Elena is as short as Alyssa had been, and she pokes him in the thigh as Tyrion grins. 

“Could you sing me this song of the river, Elena? I’d love to heat it,” says Tyrion hopefully as she and Jaime have told him little of the song Elia would breathe to the babes. Once, Elena’s voice had been a thing of the heavens. The personification of all the seasons in one. The paradox of spring and autumn. Summer and winter. Her voice would roll over the hills in sorrowful waves. Her voice was music, and grace, and the haunting feeling of knowing that her voice was brought out in a fit of rage, of pain. It’d been crestfallen words crisscrossed with all she’d known and would never know. Unstoppable, like the tides. 

But that night had taken all her muse. And yet she sings, just once more. 

Words of the common tongue escape her lips as she’d known it in Rhoynar; they smile like the weight of the world falling from their shoulders. Elena runs her fingers through Jaime’s thick golden curls, counting the shivers running beneath his skin. Tyrion drifts to sleep, her husband taking his brother back to his chambers as they make their way to theirs. Jaime is the first to fall into the spell of death and she merely observes him. How serene he looks, like the ocean. How tranquil, like the seas. But Elena is the storm he can’t stand against. And then she folds herself into his embrace. It’s unbelievably warm and she feels safe even with the unknowingness of Braavos that sends a shiver of dread down her spine. He is safe, she realizes. She trusts him in ways she’s trusted no other and so she loosens her grip and falls into a fitful slumber. Elena dreams of golden mountaintops covered in foliage and clear streams of gold as warm as the fire spun from the sun, and a great gold lion growling at the moon. 

In a dance of light against light, the river comes to life with colours she hadn’t even known the existence of. Fluorescence and darkness, crafted by the gods themselves. Each one is like a subtle watercolour wash over a pencil drawing, noticeable, but submissive to graphite underneath. Torrents of water swirl around the boat, and then the river drags them deep down in between the hills until the hills blend into one and they’re underground, like soil. The walls of marble are adorned with diamonds, amethysts, rubies, emeralds, every gem in the spectrum until the water shrouds them and it all glows blue. Elena’s voice is no longer only her own, it echoes in the cavern and refracts into voices of the past, joining together again. A crisscross of all she’s lost and all she has. “In her waters, deep and true, lie the answers and a path for you.” She turns to look at Jaime, whose green eyes are wide enough to swallow the sea in and she runs her free hand across his cheek. “Dive down deep into her sound, but not too far or you'll be drowned … “ 

The path underground is deepened, and they go faster into the root of the source. The river forms a tornado, slashing around them enabling Elena to see glimpses into the past she so craves. A gown she once lost ripped to shreds, green silk flayed out into the sea to be washed away and never seen again. Rhaegar and Lyanna running off into the abyss. Ragnar’s blood seeping into the earth. Lyn Corbray impaling a sword into the chest of her uncle, his body falling. Her father‘s corpse burning, embers of yellow and orange devouring the entity that was Cassian Varens. Stefan scouring through their father’s solar with terror alight in his eyes. Maksim enthralled by the tantalising hue of blue that would become his shroud in those days of strife. Alyssa hacking a tree with a sword sheathed in red, just days before her inevitable demise as the swelling of her stomach was covered by a cloak. Elia in those final moments. The escape of Rosa in the depths of the night as Elia had dwelled in the knowledge that she and two of her children would perish like naught more than broodmares. A balding eunuch running through the passageways of walls of red stone. Arthur Dayne bleeding out in the deserts of Dorne. Ashara slipping into the seas never to be seen again. Creatures of ice come to life. Memories, of her own and others that will haunt her forevermore. The dwelling of what’s to come, sooner or later, in years of ice and fire. 

Elena wakes to forgotten dreams. 

They break their fast together with Tyrion. Her good brother looks a little pale, but he delights in grilling Jaime about every embarrassing story in his past. Elena and Tyrion cackle as Jaime defends his past actions of once having jumped so far from the cliffs they’d thought him to have entered the halls of drowned god’s heavens and switching his breeches for laced gowns to fool the poor septa till he’d been forced to hear of a flowering. Then Elena turns on Tyrion, who turns on her, and Jaime asks the Princess about her own follies, and it’s constant chatter as their fast is broken with berries and fruits from all over. Jaime, free from the notion of ruling and all that holds him back. Tyrion, free from scrutiny and scorn no longer dwelling of throwing himself overboard. Boys who’d dreamt of eastern lands and the sweltering sun. A girl who’d dreamt of death and damnation. 

Braavos soon becomes naught but a vivid daydream, the colours of the wind pushing them into the lands further east for theirs is a land of endless skies and stars and seas and suns. They had contemplated voyaging through the lands beyond the the Free Cities, into Asshai and the Shadowlands, Slaver’s Bay and the Summer Isles where the sky darkens and all sense of familiarity dissipates. Even the the coast of Sothoryos, an alien world. Their yearnings had been quenched by the unsavoury truths of those cities, shrouded in shadows of the past and mysteries of the moon. 

A day awaits when she’ll return. 

The Lyseni resemble children of the moonlight, tresses as silver as daybreak and eyes as bright as the horizon. Valyrian ancestry runs thick through the land, noble and common men and women alike bearing the beauty of the Targaryens. Ethereal and otherworldly and celestial. A flooding of resentment consumes Elena, cursing the bastards nobles who’d turned their daughters away from the eyes of a madman for Aerys’ growing insanity had spread into the worlds of ancient blood, like a tidal wave flooding the eastern continent as if a plague for that’s what the last Targaryen King had been in his later years though that madness had always festered, even in youth, for no Targaryen escapes unscathed. Not even Ragnar, nor Rhaella, for theirs had been manifested into daring hope and fragile strength. Elena longs for a filthy notion in which Elia had lived and loved, some poor Lyseni woman’s blood coating the walls of the Red Keep because the gods have never cared for such women. The city itself is beautiful, valuing trade rather than arms and wealth rather than birth. The waters are of life and the seas rage into daybreak. 

The streets of Volantis are hot and humid, the air hot and heavy. Beyond the waterfront and its breezes the streets and alleys of Volantis are enough to drown a man in his own sweat for the sun is glorious in rage, Elena refusing to dwell much longer in the city than need be, having never truly familiarised herself with the Dornish heat. Heat shimmers off the streets, giving a dreamlike quality to the surroundings. The Black Walls protect a large labyrinth of palaces, courtyards, towers, temples, cloisters, bridges, and cellars. A a great oval of fused black dragonstone, harder than steel or diamond, built two hundred feet high by the Valyrian Freehold whose reputation is much damned. Elena oft believes the doom was well come, the notorious cruelty still lingering in the air and it sends shivers down her spine. 

Myr is a city of great advancement, famed for its art and learning. The tapestries are of the finest thread, a meshwork of the crafts of the gods’, truly. While Tyrion orders a painting Elena and Jaime are praised for the beauty that young love inspires, a businessman insistent on replicating them on interwoven thread for eternal youth and beauty can only live for so long. Better to immortalise what’s there than what isn’t, he says, and so they’re forced to gaze adoringly towards each other while Tyrion grins at the ridicule of it all, Elena’s lips eventually turning into a pout as they stand by for hours on end. Not even a thread is out of place, radiating ethereality as a sea of black and blue and white consumes the two young lovers, the moon bestowing its eternal light upon the fated pair. 

Columns of slaves line the streets of Tyrosh, men and women from the lands of always winter covered with blotches of red and black and blue adorning their flesh. An exclusive tour guide guides the trio firmly away from the people with mud for flesh and hearts of glass just as they all have, opting to dwell in blissful ignorance of the beaten and bruised whose faces are etchings of sorrow and hopelessness. The Tyroshi themselves are an eccentric peoples, tresses dyed all colours of the spectrum. The Lyseni had been a peoples of a perfect painting, and yet the inhabitants of Tyrosh are the very contrast for their noses are long and words harsh while the descendants of the Valyrian murmur sweet nothings, words coated in honey. 

Ancient Lorath was inhabited by a people known as the mazemakers, who created mazes on the islands and on mainland Essos to the south. The mazemakers were followed first by a race of hairy men similar to the Ibbenese, and then by the Andals, with each island having its own king. The largest of the islands even had four kings. Yet now the island has little to show for it in comparison to its fellow Free Cities, being the smallest and poorest alike. 

Norvos is made up out of two parts, joined only by a large stone stair, known as the Sinner's Steps. The high city, where the ancient nobility of Norvos lives, is ringed about by mighty stone walls, and located on the tallest hill in the region. Here, the great fortress-temple of the bearded priests is located. The lower city is located three hundred feet below, at the base of the hill, by the river, spread out along the muddy shores. It is defended by moats, ditches, and a timber palisade, overgrown with moss. The riverfront is lined with wharves, brothels, and beer halls. While the upper city is grim, the lower city is lively. The Three Bells — Noom, Narrah, and Nyel — govern every aspect of the lives of its inhabitants, no rest even in the night. 

Qohor appears to be the most exotic of the Free Cities, due to its status as the western terminus for overland trade networks stretching all the way to Yi Ti. The dark arts, such as divination, blood magic, and necromancy, are believed to be practiced in the City of Sorcerers. They stay there for some days, all bewitched by its sighting and sad to see the end of it. 

Elena, Jaime and Tyrion are graced with the presence of the Dothraki when they finally travel to Pentos — a culture of nomadic warriors who travel in hordes known as Khalasars. They’re victory is violent yet glorious, braids hanging from the beards of Khals to show the fortitude of their strength. Their skins are toned with dark, almond eyes and black hair, almost replicas of each other. Bronze medallion belts hang from their waists as well as painted leather vests that hang over their chest. An interesting peoples. 

But they’ll all burn.


End file.
